The Control Panel may be seeing its last days as the Settings app finally takes precedence in Windows. The Settings app was first introduced in 2012 with the launch of Windows 8, and since then it has been slowly phasing out from the long-lived Control Panel to Settings.
To be fair, the Settings Controller has been considered dead for years and has not been deleted yet. However, the nearly 40-year-old feature has existed in some form since 1985, when Windows 1.0 was released.
However, Microsoft never put it in writing that Control Panel would disappear. The only thing we have seen is a 2015 tweet posted by Neowin in which a senior Microsoft official confirmed that “Settings will eventually replace Control Panel.”
Microsoft has not officially announced the end of Control Panel, but on a support page the company noted that Control Panel is being “retired in favor of the Settings app settings, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.”
The page also includes a tip for Windows users: “Although Control Panel remains for compatibility reasons and to provide access to some settings that have not yet been migrated, we recommend that you use the Settings app whenever possible.”
Since the introduction of Settings, Control Panel has slowly lost functionality to the newer app. The only reason it still exists seems to be compatibility, something Microsoft has yet to overcome in the last 12 years.
In recent years, however, Microsoft has focused on making Windows more modern and sleek. In fact, the Settings app was designed more for touchscreens, although the software giant has moved away from that.
In the meantime, the Control Panel still exists and is accessible. One day it will die, but today is not that day.
There’s no timeline for when Control Panel might finally disappear from Windows after its slow deprecation. We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment and will update this article if the company responds.
Update:
A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the note on the support page is true, but said the company could not provide any further information about the Control Panel and when it might disappear from Windows.
