Microsoft finally officially confirms it's killing Windows Control Panel sometime soon
After mulling over it for close to 14 years, it seems Microsoft is finally ready to kill off the Windows Control Panel soon. An official confirmation has been posted on its website.
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This is never going to happen fully, because there is a ton of software and also device drivers that hook into the OG Control Panel system and install their own .cpl's there, which are required for that hardware/software to work. The system to support those is going to have to remain in place, otherwise Microsoft is going to have a lot of very angry corporate customers and hardware vendors up their noses in short order.
In fact, this is most likely the exact reason the Control Panel still exists behind the scenes the way it does today in Win10 and Win11. They'll probably go to ever-greater lengths to hide it from home users, but I'd doubt they can actually remove it completely at this point.
In fact, from TFA:
Tip: 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.
I'm sure they could keep the backend and just update the look and UI frontend though, no?
Maybe, but they can't change the look of all those third party .cpl applets.
And sure, anyone could theoretically do anything. But this is Microsoft we're talking about. They'll just put another layer of cruft on top of the five or six layers of cruft they've already got and then call it job done.
The whole point of the Settings "app" is to remove the user's ability to do anything on their own computer. The old (and far more functional) UI of the Control Panel won't get updated because Microsoft wants users to get scared when the unpretty UI appears.
That‘s like my bank saying „Hey, use our new website, the old one will be phased out in 6 werks“.
Me: „Ok, show me my bank statements“.
Bank: „That‘s only possible on the old site“.
Not a joke, sadly.
I've had a similar experience with my bank. There is no legacy site to fall back to anymore, sadly. I am still figuring out how to do things on the new site. Years after it was launched.