Windows 11 is expected to receive major design improvements in the fall of 2022, and in the recent Windows 11 Build 22509 preview released by Dev Channel, you can see that Microsoft has made a number of improvements to the Start menu, taskbar, and more.
Windows 11 Build 22509 Takes Another Step to Kill Control Panel
The classic Control Panel is still present in the OS along with the modern Settings panel, but it now supports a rounded UI to match the look of Windows 11, and Microsoft has also updated the icons within the Control Panel. More importantly, its functionality has been further reduced.
Microsoft has adopted a long-term strategy to gradually migrate the options in the Control Panel to the new Settings, and while the cutoff for this transition phase is not yet known, it looks like Windows 11 Build 22509 is another step forward.
Under Advanced Network Settings in the Settings app, a new page has been added to support advanced sharing settings such as network discovery, file and printer sharing, and public folder sharing. As part of the migration, Microsoft has also made additional improvements to the Printers & Scanners page in Settings. The device specific pages in Settings now display more information about your printer or scanner.
Also, when clicking on some of the network and device settings entries in the Control Panel, you will be redirected to the appropriate page in the Settings app. In a recent podcast, Microsoft officials also confirmed that future versions of Windows 11 will remove other advanced settings from the Control Panel. At the current pace, the Control Panel will be around for a long time, but the trend is irreversible.
In general, Microsoft never hid the idea of doing away with the traditional classic Control Panel and is gradually moving its features to the new System Settings App, but its slow pace has led to the fact that the Control Panel still exists today and many of its settings are confusingly spread between the old and new places - Microsoft clearly understands this, and the changes in Windows 11 Build 22509 may not look like much, but they are indeed necessary to completely kill the Control Panel in the future.