Ultimate Settings Panel 8.0.4

A small About box release, but one worth doing.

Java 8 MSI Installers is gone from the "More from TechyGeeksHome" list. It is a repackaging of Oracle's installers, not one of ours, and listing it there implied otherwise. It should never have been in that list.

What is left is the actual range, now as a two-column grid of buttons - AppGeek, CleanGeek, DiskGeek, DriverGeek and PDFGeek - each one opening that app's page on techygeekshome.info rather than a repository. Ultimate Settings Panel still leaves itself out, on the grounds that an app does not need to advertise itself to the person already running it.

Five is an odd number, so the "All our code on GitHub" button takes the spare cell and the grid squares off.

Nothing else has changed - same panel, same 250+ settings, same single self-contained executable.

Full Changelog: v8.0.3...v8.0.4

Ultimate Settings Panel 8.0.3

Fixes every Run button. On 8.0.1 and 8.0.2 no card on any screen could launch anything - pressing Run showed "run bridge unavailable" and nothing happened.

The panel launches things by calling window.uspRun, a function the Go shell hands to the page, and the shell never registered it. It bound the update check and nothing else. Reported in #6.

The bind is back, with a launcher that handles the three kinds of card:

• URIs Windows opens for itself - ms-settings:, ms-windows-store:, microsoft-edge:, https:
• Console tools whose output is the point - ipconfig /flushdns, gpresult /r, sfc /scannow - now run under cmd /k so the window stays open instead of closing before the answer can be read
• Everything else - GUI tools, .msc consoles, .cpl applets, Office switches, rundll32 entries

Launching goes through ShellExecuteW with a NULL verb, which is the same call Win+R makes, so each file type gets its own default verb. Nothing is elevated and nothing runs hidden. A failure now reports the reason instead of staying silent.

All 256 commands in the panel were classified and checked: 74 URIs, 43 console tools, the rest direct.

What's Changed

• Give the page back its launch bridge by @techygeekshome in #11

Full Changelog: v8.0.2...v8.0.3

Ultimate Settings Panel 8.0.2

Ultimate Settings Panel 8.0.2.

This release fixes the version reporting that made the app disagree with itself, and finishes the work started in 8.0.1.

Fixed

• The About screen reported a hard-coded 8.0.0 while the title bar showed the real version. Both now read the actual build.
• The founding year was wrong in several places. Ultimate Settings Panel was first released on 27 August 2014, not 2010 - 2010 was the founding year of the TechyGeeksHome site, not of this tool.

Added

• A proper application icon, embedded in the executable along with a Windows version resource, so the file now shows its version in Explorer.
• A family panel in About, linking the other free TechyGeeksHome tools.

Notes

The version is no longer hard-coded into the title. It is read from the build, so it cannot drift out of step again.

Ultimate Settings Panel is free. It is not code signed, so Windows SmartScreen will warn on first run.

What's Changed

• Bump the Chocolatey package to 8.0.1 by @techygeekshome in #3
• Give the executable a real icon and version details by @techygeekshome in #4
• Drop the version from the title and read it from the GitHub release i… by @techygeekshome in #5
• Add the family panel to About, and correct the founding year by @techygeekshome in #7
• Show the real version in the app, not a hard-coded 8.0.0 by @techygeekshome in #8
• update by @techygeekshome in #10

Full Changelog: v8.0.1...v8.0.2

Ultimate Settings Panel 8.0.1

What's Changed

• Restore the source, and stop the startup update check (8.0.1) by @techygeekshome in #1
• Publish releases from CI, so a shipped binary matches the source by @techygeekshome in #2

New Contributors

• @techygeekshome made their first contribution in #1

Full Changelog: v8.0.0...v8.0.1

Ultimate Settings Panel 8.0.0

A complete, ground-up reimagining of the Ultimate Settings Panel: a native Windows app and a portable web app, replacing the original C# / WinForms program.

Added

• Native Windows app (Ultimate Settings Panel.exe) - renders the panel in a Microsoft Edge WebView2 window (Chromium) and launches tools through a small JavaScript-Go bridge (window.uspRun). Every item has a real Run button. No install, Windows 10 & 11.
• Web app (index.html) - a single self-contained HTML/CSS/JavaScript file. No install, no dependencies, works offline and on any device.
• Instant search across names, descriptions and the underlying commands (/ to focus, Esc to clear in the web version).
• New Windows 11 Settings category - ~70 ms-settings: deep links that open the real Settings pages directly.
• New Terminal & Shell category - Windows Terminal, PowerShell 7 (pwsh) and winget app-management commands.
• Modern diagnostics - sfc /scannow, DISM .../RestoreHealth, powercfg /batteryreport, powercfg /energy, Wi-Fi report, Winsock and TCP/IP reset, and more.
• Favourites (saved locally), light / dark theme with system detection, Copy and .bat export (web version).
• 250+ items across 13 categories in total.

Changed

• All TechyGeeksHome links updated from the old blog.techygeekshome.info domain to techygeekshome.info (slugs unchanged).
• Twitter links updated to X (x.com).
• Dead telnet "tricks" replaced with living web equivalents (ASCIImation Star Wars, Telehack, wttr.in).
• Internet Explorer entries replaced with Microsoft Edge (including IE mode).

Fixed

• Windows Terminal (admin) now actually elevates (Start-Process wt -Verb RunAs) instead of launching a normal wt.

Removed

• Google Analytics tracking - Universal Analytics was permanently shut down in July 2023. The app now collects nothing.
• Internet Explorer launchers - IE was retired by Microsoft in 2022.
• Google+ links - the service was discontinued.
• The unused COM PlaLibrary reference and the old blog-hosted XML updater from the original app.

Security

• The desktop app no longer uses mshta or drops a script to a temporary folder, avoiding the "living-off-the-land" pattern that anti-virus/EDR heuristics flag.

Web edition: https://techygeekshome.info/ultimate-settings-panel-online/
Windows app: https://techygeekshome.info/product/ultimate-settings-panel-app/

Full changelog: CHANGELOG.md