Microsoft plans Advanced Windows Settings panel for developers to give power users more control over their PCs

2023-12-04 13:16:07

Microsoft has added many new features to Windows 11 over the past year, but the company is still working on some that haven’t shipped. Among them is a new Advanced Settings panel for Windows, which will allow power users to take more control over their operating system and improve their workflows. The new panel aims to give developers more control over system settings and behaviors, help them discover powerful settings, and create a uniform user interface experience.

In May, while Microsoft said it was bringing the power of AI to Windows 11, it presented Dev Home in these terms:

With a renewed focus on your productivity, we announce a new home for developers on Windows – Dev Home. Dev Home is a new experience in Windows 11, now available in early preview, that gets you back in the zone and streamlines your workflow with features like WinGet Setup for easier, faster setup, Dev Drive for performance file system improvements and a new customizable dashboard to track all your workflows and tasks in one place. Dev Home makes it easy to connect to GitHub and configure your machine to code for the repositories you’re interested in, easily installing the tools and packages you need. Dev Home can also set up your cloud coding environments using Microsoft Dev Box and GitHub Codespaces. With Dev Home, designed by and for developers, you now have your ultimate productivity companion so you can focus on what you do best: writing code.

The recently released Dev Home Preview for Windows 11 offers several developer-related features to make life easier for code writers. But Microsoft wants to take it a step further and equip the app with “Advanced Windows Settings,” a section with additional options and preferences that otherwise require more complicated actions to enable/disable or customize.

Microsoft announced the idea on the Dev Home GitHub repository, and the company wants your feedback and ideas on what options or features should be included in Advanced Windows Settings. The post also acknowledges that developers want to change many settings or registry keys that are either not accessible through the Settings app or are difficult to discover within the operating system.

Ultimately, Advanced Windows Settings will give developers (and regular customers) more control over their computers, provide access to new or experimental features for developer workflows, and increase awareness of features that might improve their experiences. . Think of it as a developer-focused variation of PowerToys.

Microsoft has now released some PoC images of the new Windows Advanced Settings panel. Microsoft has made it clear that this is not intended to replace the default Windows Settings panel; instead, it is designed to give advanced users more control over how their operating system works.

Among the objectives that Microsoft wants to achieve with this new panel, we can cite:
Give developers more control over their system settings and advanced behaviors Help developers discover powerful settings that can improve their daily workflows and machine performance Create a uniform user interface experience to manage and customize new development experiences on Windows (for example, native integration of File Explorer and version control) so that you can quickly iterate on new features and customizations Work with the developer community to identify additional settings that are useful to integrate into the tool Can be easily scripted and reapplied to new ones machines and/or existing machines
Are not objectives:
This feature is not intended to replace existing settings found in the Windows Settings app. This feature is not intended to complicate the way developers currently tweak their machines. This feature is not intended to replace existing surfaces. in Windows such as the For Developers settings page in the Windows Settings app.
Microsoft encourages users to provide feedback on the panel’s design through the GitHub discussion thread. It seems that the Windows publisher wants to make this new feature a success among experienced Windows 11 users, and therefore gathering their opinion on the feature from the design phase is very important.

Source : Microsoft (1, 2)

And you ?

What do you think of the new Advanced Settings panel for Windows? Is this a useful feature for experienced users or confusing for novice users?
What settings would you like to see included in the Advanced Settings panel for Windows? Which ones do you use most often in your development work?
How would the Advanced Settings Panel for Windows integrate with other developer tools, such as Visual Studio, GitHub, PowerShell, etc.? ?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of upgrading to Windows 11 to take advantage of the advanced settings panel for Windows? Is it worth investing in new compatible hardware?
What are the best practices for using the Advanced Settings Panel for Windows? How to avoid errors, conflicts and performance issues?

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