Microsoft finally confirms Control Panel is going away — what you need to know

Control Panel may finally be seeing its last days as the Settings app will finally take precedence in Windows. The Settings app was first introduced back in 2012 with the launch of Windows 8, and it's been a slow migration from the long-lived Control Panel to Settings ever since. 

To be fair to Control Panel, the settings controller has been reported dead for years, and it has yet to be purged. Still, the nearly 40 year old feature has existed in some form since 1985 when Windows 1.0 appeared.

However, Microsoft has never put it down in writing that Control Panel would disappear. The most we've seen is a Tweet from 2015 reported by Neowin where a senior Microsoft official confirmed that "Settings will eventually supersede Control Panel."

Microsoft hasn't officially announced that Control Panel is going away, but in a support page Microsoft noted that Control Panel will be "deprecated in favor of the settings of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience."

The page goes on to give a tip to Windows users: "while the Control Panel still exists for compatibility reasons and to provide access to some settings that have not yet migrated, you're encouraged to use the Settings app, whenever possible."

Ever since Settings was introduced, Control Panel has been slowly losing functionality to the newer app. The only reason it still exists appears to be compatibility, something Microsoft has yet to overcome in the last 12 years.

In recent years though, Microsoft has been focused on making Windows more modern and streamlined. In fact, the Settings app was created more for touchscreens, despite the software giant backing away from that. 

In the meantime, Control Panel still exists and is accessible. Someday it will die but today is not that day.

There is no timeline for when Control Panel might finally disappear from Windows after it's slow depreciation. We reached out to Microsoft for comment and will update this article if and when the company responds.

Update:

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that support page note is true, but said that the company had nothing else to share about Control Panel and when it might disappear from Windows. 

More from Tom's Guide

• Microsoft reveals Phi-3.5 — this new small AI model outperforms Gemini and GPT-4o
• Windows Recall set for a return — when you can expect this controversial feature to appear
• Apple is handling AI so much better than Microsoft I may ditch Windows for macOS Sequoia