Microsoft Continues The Control Panel Shuffle On Windows 11

If We Don’t Move Things Around How Will Anyone Know It Is New?

If you are using Windows 11, or support those that do, you might soon need to do some digging to find the settings you once could expect to find under the Control Panel.  For instance if you wanted to change network discovery, or file and printer sharing, you should no longer look for the option under the Network and Sharing Centre, instead you will need to fire up that lovely Settings app and dig around in there for those settings.  The same will be true for most other network settings as well as Device Manager as they have also been migrated to the Settings app.

Along with all those network settings, printers and scanners have lost their own easily accessible page, migrating from the Control Panel to the Windows 11 Settings app.   In most cases this is just a matter of changing your habits to match how Microsoft wants you to interact with Windows, but not always.  The Settings app has been designed to be simplified, in theory to allow the less technically inclined to be able to change settings on their own.  That simplification does have the side effect of hiding the advanced settings that we use on a regular basis.

Currently, these changes to the Control Panel are only implemented in he Windows 11 Insider build 22509, but expect them to be rolled out to everyone in the not too distant future.  Slashdot has links to the changes as well as more details on Windows 11 Insider build 2250 right here.