Microsoft is still slowly chipping away at the Control Panel in Windows 11
The death of the Control Panel has been slow and painful. The long and drawn out move from the Control Panel to the Settings app started years ago, and it is still an ongoing process in Insider Builds of Windows 11.
It is not really clear why Microsoft is taking so long to migrate options across from the Control Panel to Settings, other than factoring in the idea that it is really not considered a priority. But with the release of Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27928 to the Canary Channel this week, the Control Panel continues to be subjected to a death by a thousand cuts.
This time around, Microsoft proudly announces that it is moving more time and language settings from Control Panel to Settings. This highlights the fact that some types of settings and options are split awkwardly between both Settings and Control Panel.
Microsoft uses the release notes for the latest Canary build of Windows 11 to announce:
You can now add additional clocks from Settings > Time & language > Date & time under the collapsed section which can be expanded for “Show time and date in the system tray”. For those unfamiliar with the feature, these additional clocks display in Notification Center, as well as the tooltip when hovering over the clock in the taskbar.
While this is arguably a “highlight” – if that is not a little over the top – it is not the only change in this area. Microsoft also draws attention to the following:
- You can now change your time server from Settings > Time & language > Date & time, under “Additional settings”.
- The formatting settings for date and time have moved from Settings > Time & language > Language & region to Settings > Time & language > Date & time, and you can now change your AM/PM symbol from here as well (along with other existing formatting settings).
- You can now change number and currency format from Settings > Time & language > Language & region, under the “Region” section.
- If you’d like to enable Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support, there is now a toggle for this under Settings > Time & language > Language & region, under the “Language” section.
- If needed, you can now copy current user language and region settings to welcome screen and system account, as well as new user accounts, from Settings > Time & language > Language & region, under “Additional settings”.
The Control Panel lives on
Amusingly, this particular build of Windows 11 also serves to highlight the fact that the Settings app is not without problems. There is a fix for a problem noted by some users, specifically:
- Fixed an issue where Settings might crash if you attempt to add a security key under Settings > Account > Sign-in options.
The Control Panel continues to wither and die – but it is still hanging on in there. Microsoft has given no indication of quite when it envisions completing the transition to the Settings app – nor do we even know if the company has even a vague timeline in mind. But keeping in mind how Microsoft likes to drag its heels, and looking at how many ancient throwbacks to very early versions of Windows are still to be found in Windows 11, it does not seem likely to be a process that is finished any time soon. You can expect to see the Control Panel living on in Windows 12, Windows 13, or whatever comes next. However much Microsoft says that the Control Panel is a thing of the past, the evidence shows that it is alive in the present, and it likely has a future ahead of it too.
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