There are probably life-long Windows users who have never accessed the Control Panel—the interface for taking care of all the of the operating system’s settings. With the Control Panel, you can add or remove software/hardware, administer users’ accounts, take care of you security settings, change how Windows looks and acts, and a lot more. It’s powerful stuff. And scary for non-techies.

Consider this a quick-and-dirty intro to some of the less obvious things you should know about accessing the Control Panel—which is, really, just a virtual folder full of applets in a single location within Windows. It’s been that way since Windows 95, but we’re going to concentrate on the latest versions of Windows, the popular Windows 7, and the “we put up with it until the next one” Windows 8/8.1. We can’t cover everything you can do with Control Panel—that would fill entire books, and even then, not comprehensively. But we can get you started on the basics.

Opening the Control Panel

On Windows 7, click Start and Control Panel from the menu. It’s that simple.

In 8/8.1, there are multiple ways to access the Control Panel. It differs whether you’re on the “Modern” Start screen with all its giant square tiles or the standard desktop. While on the Start screen, just begin typing “control panel” and it will auto fill the search with the term. In fact, you can search with a term for the type of Control Panel applet you want, such as “uninstall” and go to it directly—if you can find the right applet in the results, which can be plentiful.

On the 8/8.1 desktop, one trick is to right-click in the lower left corner of the screen, or use the keystroke Windows+X. The Power-User Menu will pop up; it looks sort of “start-ish” and provides access to lots of administrative tools, including Control Panel.

Secrets of the Windows Control Panel, Power User Menu

Another option: hit the keystroke Windows+I (as in Iguana) to activate a slide-out settings menu. It pops out from the right, just like the Charms menu you get by placing your cursor in the upper-right corner of the Windows 8 desktop. But this settings menu has Control Panel right on it. (The regular slide-out Charms menu, accessed via Windows+Q makes you do a search on “Control Panel.”) You can also open the Run dialog box—it’s Windows’ quickie command-line—with Windows+R and type “control” to get it.

I prefer to have a shortcut icon on my desktop and taskbar to directly open Control Panel. Best way to do that is to allow a Control Panel icon to live on the desktop, courtesy of Windows itself. In the upper right of Control Panel, search on “Icons” and then click “Show or hide common icons on the desktop” under Personalization. Put a checkmark next to Control Panel in the Desktop Icon Settings. Once it appears on the desktop, you can drag it to the taskbar to make another shortcut.

Accessing Applets

Once you’ve opened Control Panel, you’ll find it organized by Category.

Control Panel, by Category

This setup makes it pretty easy to browse through all the various settings; you’ll see the most used applets listed under each heading; clicking a heading brings up even more options. There’s a menu on the left for the main headings, so there’s no need to back out to the main Control Panel folder to change. This is what you get when you click “Programs”:

Secrets of the Windows Control Panel, Control Panel, Programs

There’s one other view—click the “View by” drop-down at the top of control panel and select “Large icons” or “Small icons” to get a long list of all the applets available. This is sometimes called the “Classic View” since that’s how control panels were displayed before Windows 7. This view includes every Control Panel applet that comes with Windows, plus any third-party control panel applets(Opens in a new window). In this screen you’ll see Quicktime from Apple, Flash from Adobe, and Rapid Storage Technology from Intel, for example.

Control Panel, by Name

But ultimately, the fastest way to find a control panel applet is to use the search box. Windows even programs in some logic so if you search for some unrelated words, you might get the right applet. For example, type “virus” and Control Panel knows to bring up the Windows Defender integrated anti-malware.

Playing God

If you have just a few Control Panel applets you access regularly, create a personalized Control Panel folder. Just make a new folder, access the Classic View, then drag applets to the folder. It will make shortcuts to each. Give it a name like “My ControlPanel” and change the icon (right-click, select Properties > Customize Tab >Change Icon). In Windows 7, you can even drag that to the Start button for quick access.

There’s a “hidden” feature of Windows that some call God Mode, but that’s a total misnomer. It’s not really a mega-power-mode like you’d find in video games. It’s simply a special shortcut that provides access to every little applet and tweak imaginable, via the All Tasks window. To make it, create a folder and name it this:

God Mode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

That will name the folder “God Mode,” but you can change the text string above to say anything before the period and get the same functions. It provides a nice overview of just how much is tucked away in your Control Panel, but it’s not really necessary—there’s nothing in the “God Mode” folder you can’t find with a search in the Control Panel. It will even show you the pre-set keywords you can use for searches. See, there’s “virus” listed for Windows Defender, as mentioned.

Secrets of the Windows Control Panel, God Mode

If you want to get down to the really nitty-gritty, you can open up almost any control panel applet directly from a Run command line (Windows+R). There’s a full list of the commands you can use here(Opens in a new window).

Tweaks to the UI

A lot of people think of the Control Panel as the place to go to make changes to the user interface of Windows. While that’s true in part (with the applets under the Appearance and Personalization heading, naturally), there’s a lot more than can be done by editing the Windows Registry—the database behind the scenes that stores all the options and configurations of the operating system. It’s not for the faint of heart, but there are plenty of apps out there that can do it for you. Microsoft even used to provide one, called TweakUI, but it’s languished since Windows Vista went away.

Instead, try tools like Windows Tweaker(Opens in a new window) or Ultimate Windows Tweaker for Windows 8(Opens in a new window) (or UWT version 2.2 for Windows 7(Opens in a new window)). They are filled to the brim with buttons that provide slick ways to change the registry and get little changes in the OS that can be immeasurably wonderful.

Secrets of the Windows Control Panel, Ultimate Windows Tweaker

For more, check out Into Windows(Opens in a new window), which offers an excellent rundown of tutorials for making changes to Windows 7 and 8.