Windows 11 includes a handy new “Quick Settings” menu that replaces the functionality found in Action Center on Windows 10. At a glance, it looks just like Control Center on a Mac. Here’s an overview of what it does and how it works.
A convenient menu to quickly change settings
When you’re using your PC, sometimes you need to quickly change a setting, but you probably don’t want to wade through menus or the full Windows Settings app to change them. Then Windows 11 Quick Settings is exactly what you need. We’ve loaded Windows 11 Insider Preview to take a first look.
To access the Quick Settings menu in Windows 11, all you need to do is click on a set of status icons (Wi-Fi, Speaker, and Battery in our example) in the lower right corner of the screen. It’s located just to the left of the date and time on the taskbar. Or, you can press Windows + A on the keyboard (which is the Action Center shortcut in Windows 10).
Once you click on it, a small menu with rounded corners will appear instantly. It includes buttons that let you quickly connect or disconnect Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, a button for airplane mode, battery saver, focus assist, reachability, and night light ( which changes the color temperature of the screen) by default.
There’s also a volume slider and a screen brightness slider, a small battery charge indicator (on applicable devices), and a quick link to Windows Settings (a small gear).
For menu items like Accessibility that have secondary options, if you click their primary button, the Quick Settings menu will change to include the new options. A back button in the top left corner will take you back to the normal quick settings view.
To change the contents of the Quick Settings menu, you click on a small pencil icon in the lower right corner of the menu itself.
After clicking the pencil icon, the menu icons turn gray and you can remove items from the menu by clicking small “unpin” icons (which look like a crossed out thumbtack).
You can also click an “Add” button to add new quick settings commands from a pop-up list. Currently, these are “Connect” (which controls streaming to Miracast devices), “Keyboard Layout”, “Mobile Hotspot”, “Nearby Share”, “Project” and ” Rotation lock”.
If you add them all, the Quick Settings menu will expand vertically to accommodate the new buttons.
To close the Quick Settings menu, you click outside the onscreen menu area or press Esc. Toggling the menu by clicking the Quick Settings button area on the taskbar doesn’t work consistently, but that may be a bug in the Windows 11 Insider Preview we’re using here.
Still, things look good so far, and Quick Settings will likely continue to improve over time as Windows 11 gets closer to its eventual release. Here’s to hoping!
