In recent years I've been using the search bar a lot anyway, since the modal nature of the old System Preferences app wasn't great for quickly checking through several settings screens. And I often forget where some settings are — the taxonomy is not always so clear.
The new Settings app seems like an improvement to me. The vertical list of settings categories is easier to quickly scan, and it remains visible all the time. That alone is a great improvement, and makes it quite a bit easier to navigate the (huge) list of available settings.
>The new Settings app seems like an improvement to me.
While using Gnome's style for the settings application is a huge improvement, the implementation is laggy and doesn't scroll smoothly. And it takes a while for each Stack item to load and render when it's selected. x86_64 here.
Yeah, the items could load more snappily. On my M1 there's a delay (0.2 – 0.5 seconds?) between clicking an item and it showing up — enough to make it feel annoyingly laggy.
I haven't used Gnome in decades. To me it looks just like the iPad Settings app, or iPhone's in horizontal mode.
The new Settings app seems like an improvement to me. The vertical list of settings categories is easier to quickly scan, and it remains visible all the time. That alone is a great improvement, and makes it quite a bit easier to navigate the (huge) list of available settings.