Microsoft plans to add an "Advanced Settings" panel to Windows 11 via DevHome. This new panel gives you more control over your operating system's built-in settings or behaviors, such as changing the appearance of labeled folder icons in File Explorer.
With the release of Windows 11 Moment 4, Microsoft has brought many new features to the operating system in the form of app updates and latest feature additions. Many stock apps have been updated, and new ones have been added. One of them is DevHome, which now has a new "Advanced Settings" panel.
We discovered on GitHub that Microsoft plans to add an "Advanced Settings" option to the DevHome app. A new Settings page is available to all Windows 11 users, allowing them to manage features such as Show file extensions, Show hidden and system files, or Show full path in title.
These features can already be turned on or off through File Explorer's folder view or the registry, but soon all of Windows 11's advanced settings will be managed centrally in the DevHome app.
DevHome is a sandbox experience specifically for developers in Windows 11. Developers can use it to enhance and customize development projects using extensions. This feature is mainly aimed at developers and power users, so we don't hear about it very often. While DevHome remains a very technical feature for the most part, that seems to be changing now.
According to Microsoft, the new Settings page will "provide developers with more system settings and advanced behavioral controls." It will provide users with more fine-grained control and a more unified user interface experience. The setup page can also be easily scripted and re-applied to new and/or existing machines.
There is a lively discussion going on on GitHub, and developers have expressed their views and opinions. While many people applauded the change, some had their own opinions on some of the changes, with one developer suggesting that the new "Attach File Explorer" feature should be exposed to all users at the operating system level.
The move caught the attention of developers, and adding more features to Windows 11 is always welcome, and DevHome is one of the best new features, albeit a bit niche.
However, Microsoft has clarified that the new "Advanced Settings" in Windows 11 are not intended to replace the existing settings in the "Settings" application.