The Windows Control Panel is dead … No, it’s not … Well, it is sort of half-dead … But there’s still a pulse.

Microsoft’s journey to migrate its 39-year-old Control Panel over to Settings has been playing out for more than a decade.

But in recent days there has been great confusion over the demise of the Control Panel.

It’s peak tech industry type of stuff – someone reads an official beta or specs or internal or support note document, writes about it, everyone else writes about it, the document authors realise they’ve left a loophole in their wording, change it, then everyone writes about the fact the wording has changed …

 

Neowin headline about Windows Control Panel.

 

An August 21 headline from US IT site Neowin stated: Microsoft finally officially confirms it’s killing Windows Control Panel sometime soon.

This was a big statement, and left no wriggle room. It was done. Finished. Kaput.

Neowin stated that while browsing a Microsoft support note it “spotted what appeared to be the first official on-record confirmation from Microsoft itself about the apparent impending death of Control Panel sometime in the future”.

Eagle-eyed copy editors noted that “Soon” had become “sometime in the future”, but that’s between the headline writer and their god.

Windows Control Panel.

The support note stated: “The Control Panel is a feature that’s been part of Windows for a long time. It provides a centralised location to view and manipulate system settings and controls.

“Through a series of applets, you can adjust various options ranging from system time and date to hardware settings, network configurations, and more. The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.”

Neowin says that following its story “the tech community picked up on it which subsequently led to widespread reporting”. 

Five days later it reported that Microsoft had since “tweaked the support article and the text ‘in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app’ has now been wiped and has been replaced with ‘many of the settings in Control Panel are in the process of being migrated to the Settings app’, perhaps indicating that the company itself is not certain on whether it will ever truly be able to deprecate Control Panel completely. Or at the very least, it is not going to happen any time soon.”

The Verge contacted Microsoft for clarity but didn’t hear back.