The Control Panel in Windows 10 still houses many important settings which are not available in Settings. You can use Administrative tools, manage user accounts on the computer in a flexible way, maintain data backups, change the functionality of hardware and many other things. I would like to share a tip which can significantly speed up your access to frequently used Control Panel settings in Windows 10. You can also pin them inside the jump list to access them with just two clicks.
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Microsoft wants you to get used to the Settings app, because the classic Control Panel will be removed soon. However, there are lots of classic applets which still do not have their counterparts in the Settings app, so Control Panel is still very useful tool for every Windows 10 user.
Tip: See how to restore Control Panel items in Win+X menu in Windows 10 Creators Update (Redstone 2)
Pin Control Panel Applets to Taskbar in Windows 10
The first thing we need to do is to pin Control Panel to the taskbar. Here is how it can be done.
- Open Control Panel in Windows 10.
- Right click the Control Panel icon on the taskbar and choose "Pin to taskbar".
- Now, drag and drop your favorite applets from the Control Panel to its icon on the taskbar. The applet will be pinned to the jumplist of the Control Panel. See the following screenshot:
You will get your favorite settings in the jump list! This is very useful. You can pin the desired applets which you need most frequently to the top of the list to make them always visible regardless of how recently you used them.
Note: you can use this trick in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 too.
Pin individual Control Panel applets directly to the taskbar of Windows 10
Using the list of available shell commands, you can quickly pin your favorite classic Control Panel applets directly to the taskbar.
- Pick a shell command from the list provided here:
- CLSID (GUID) shell location list in Windows 10 Anniversary Update
- The list of shell commands in Windows 10
For example, I want to pin the Network connections folder. The shell command for the folder is as follows:
shell:::{7007ACC7-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E} - Create a new Desktop shortcut using the following command as the shortcut target:
explorer.exe shell:::{7007ACC7-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E}
- Name your shortcut as you wish and specify the desired icon:
- Right click the shortcut you created and select "Pin to taskbar":
- The applet is now pinned to the taskbar. You can safely remove the Desktop shortcut you created above.
That's it.
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Some of the things you mentioned are not that related to the Control Panel. For example, the Administrative Tools section is just a regular folder with shortcuts, which is already available from Start and can be pinned to File Explorer’s Quick Access, for example. Other tools like the Device Manager run through the Microsoft Management Console.
I’m sure they’ll add the remaining important stuff to Settings before getting rid of the Control Panel. And there’s always PowerShell :)