RIP: After 20 Years, It's Time to Say Goodbye to the Nvidia Control Panel

New Nvidia drivers have landed, bringing compatibility for 007 First Light, Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, F1 25: 2026 Season Pack and World of Tanks: Heat. More importantly though, these drivers also mark the retirement of a PC gaming legend: the Nvidia Control Panel.

Following a fresh installation of Game Ready Driver 610.47, you'll find the familiar Control Panel shortcut when right-clicking on the desktop has been removed. Instead, all of the features have made their way to the redesigned Nvidia app, which is admittedly a lot more capable and visually modern than its predecessor. Still, it feels weird not seeing that option pop up in the right click menu, even if Windows 11 hid it behind a "show more options" menu option anyway.

The Nvidia Control Panel was originally added in Nvidia ForceWare 90 in late 2006, details of which are lovingly preserved at iXBT Labs. Here's a section:

The new Nvidia Control Panel is perhaps the biggest change in ForceWare 90 and certainly the biggest one that impacts usability... intended for simple and quick configuration of system components from this company in a unified shell, which fits well... Control Panel is specially designed for coming Microsoft Windows Vista, it will be completely integrated into this operating system... The artwork of the new utility for configuring Nvidia products was designed by a special GUI team. It should simplify ForceWare configuration and facilitate the usage of other utilities from this company.

Thankfully, Nvidia Control Panel will remain installed if you don't choose to use a clean installation, and you can still download the app from the Windows Store if you miss it.

Here's what Nvidia had to say about the momentous occasion:

After 20 years of dedicated service, the classic Nvidia Control Panel is officially retiring for Game Ready and Studio Drivers... Existing installs of the Nvidia Control Panel will remain on users’ systems, unless they perform a clean installation, and users who still need the Nvidia Control Panel can continue to download it from the Microsoft Store, but we won’t be adding features, fixes, or other changes.

A 20-year lifetime is pretty respectable for a piece of software - I'd struggle to think of anything else that I use on a regular basis with similar levels of longevity beyond actual Windows components like Notepad and Explorer.

So, Fs in the chat, please, and your stories of ye olde GeForce cards in the comments.