- Microsoft has moved another piece of the Control Panel to Settings
- This happened in the latest preview build of Windows 11
- Don’t expect the migration of the entire Control Panel to happen anytime soon, though, as Microsoft has bigger fish to fry this year
Windows 11 is getting another feature drafted across from the old Control Panel into the Settings app.
Windows Central noticed that a regular Microsoft watcher on X, PhantomOfEarth, posted about a discovery in the latest Windows 11 preview build. The ability to change the name of the user account has been moved to the Settings app, whereas it previously resided in the Control Panel.
However, while the moved functionality might be in Settings now, it doesn’t actually work yet. Microsoft is still implementing the feature in build 26300.7877 of Windows 11, which arrived late last week in the Dev channel.
While this is a relatively small piece of migration, it’s good to have this option shifted over from the Control Panel. People may actually see it in the Settings app, whereas most folks don’t ever go near the old school Control Panel any longer.
Analysis: a painfully slow process
If you’re wondering: why is the Control Panel still around? It’s because there’s a ton of legacy options kicking about in dusty corners of this part of the Windows 11 interface, so it’s not a straightforward job to sort through what needs to be transferred to the Settings app, and what should be pushed aside in the name of streamlining. It’s also the case that some of the more complicated panels aren’t easily translated to the cleaner lines of the modern Settings app.
As you’ve probably noticed, Microsoft’s migration of features from the Control Panel to Settings has been very sluggish, to say the least. What we’re seeing is occasional drips of features – like this single option – being shuttled over.
Really, Microsoft should be speeding up the pace of this work, because it’s embarrassing how slow progress has been on this front. It is far from ideal to suddenly be confronted by a jarring piece of legacy interface in Windows 11 when you reach to adjust a less commonly used option – and it gives the operating system an unfinished feel, frankly.
Sadly, the pace of change with the Control Panel is unlikely to accelerate, given Microsoft’s pledge to fix the fundamentals of Windows 11 – the bugs, quirks, and less performant parts of the desktop interface – this year. Between that campaign and hopefully shoring up the bug-checking (quality assurance) side of Windows 11, I can’t imagine there’ll be much in the way of resources to deal with the Control Panel migration. If anything, I can see this work grinding to a halt in 2026.
In short, don’t hold your breath for the day when the Control Panel is finally and irreversibly axed from Microsoft’s desktop operating system. We’ll be lucky if this happens before the end of the decade.
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