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Comment by mastazi | Hacker News Reader

To me, the iOS Settings app just feels like a structure-less list where I have to use "search" to find anything anyway. (Perhaps my problem is that I have a strong desktop background and I don't use mobile phones much). To me, making the MacOS settings more like a phone would be a big step backwards.

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To back up this argument: the redesigned settings app looks a lot like the one in Windows 10 and that one is a nightmare, specifically because it uses a phone-inspired design.

A valid complaint about the System Preferences app is that it is hesitant to introduce new top-level subdivisions (the tabs). They should roughly double the amount of tabs, and introduce new categories in order to group them together better.

I’ll note that I quite like the settings app in Windows 11. Far better than any previous windows iteration. Everything I’ve need since I got my PC a year ago is in there, it looks good, it’s searchable, and I haven’t needed to open control panel a single time.

Totally agree. Every time I open System Preference, I spend several seconds trying to find what I'm looking for. I'm sure that the icons are in _some_ order, but it's certainly not obvious to me what it is.

Yep. On a new machine I always go to the menu in System Preferences and choose "View" → "Organize Alphabetically"

I very much agree. I recall around the era of iPhone 4 or 5 (?) that I could easily navigate the Settings app without ferreting around looking for the right page. Now I have found that I can almost never find what I’m looking for without searching.

The macOS System Prefs is also not ideal but I prefer it to the iOS Settings.

100% — including my ad for apple arcade free. Keyboards is buried under General>Keyboard>Keyboards but Notes gets a front page listing.

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