Control Panel is a historical feature of the Microsoft operating system. As you know, since its inception, it has concentrated the most common configuration settings in an organized manner, which for decades has made it significantly easier to locate what we wanted to modify, whether we knew its exact location or, on the contrary, it was the first time in our life that we tried to make such a configuration modification.

However, it is known that Microsoft is not particularly happy with this solutionand has been looking for a way to end it for years. We already talked to you about it six years ago, and during that time the people at Redmond made several moves to reduce its importance, to eventually remove it. But, and importantly, such moves have always faced some resistance, which is why we think Microsoft hasn’t killed it yet.

So the last news we had in this regard was from late 2021, when we told you that Microsoft was moving forward with its plans to remove it, and from August 2022, when we told you that it appeared that the removal was not on the agenda. And since then, radio silence about it. Some unconfirmed rumors, as always happens with these things, but nothing that makes us seriously think that Redmond has changed his mind again. Until last week.

An update to the support document a few days ago set off all the alarms as it indicated Microsoft considered removing the Windows Control Panel. Specifically, the text that triggered it was the following: «The Control Panel has been phased out in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.«. No timelines or steps are mentioned, but there is clearly talk of eradicating it, and the conversation hasn’t stopped since that text appeared.

However, as we can read in Neowin, it seems that Microsoft has relented and the notorious text has been modified. Instead we can now read “Many Control Panel settings are being migrated to the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience«. That said, it once again leaves aside the removal of the Control Panel and continues with Plan B to continue moving its elements into the System Configuration section, which is what Microsoft hopes the Control Panel will remove. Will this time be definitive, in one sense or another?