No setting is on every device
It feels like every device has the same handful of settings. It does not. We read the first screen of Settings on 43 operating systems, from iOS 27 to Windows 98, and counted what they have in common. The answer is: less than half of them agree on anything.
What 43 first screens actually share
The first screen of Settings is the part a manufacturer controls most tightly. It is the shortlist — what the vendor thinks you will reach for. If there were a universal set of settings, this is where it would show up.
Counting the top-level entries on the newest release of all 43 systems, this is how far the most common ones reach:
| Entry | Systems | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Bluetooth | 19 / 43 | 44% |
| Notifications | 18 / 43 | 42% |
| Accessibility | 17 / 43 | 40% |
| Wi-Fi | 14 / 43 | 33% |
| System | 14 / 43 | 33% |
| Display | 14 / 43 | 33% |
| Battery | 13 / 43 | 30% |
Nothing reaches half. The single most universal idea in consumer computing — pairing a Bluetooth device — is named on the first screen of fewer than one system in two.
Why the number is so low
Two things drag it down, and only one of them is about naming.
The first is grouping. Android does not put Wi-Fi on its first screen; it puts Network & internet, and Wi-Fi is inside. Samsung’s One UI calls the same group Connections. Windows 11 calls it Network & internet too, but puts Bluetooth somewhere else entirely, under Bluetooth & devices. Three vendors, three shapes, one concept.
The second is that a television, a car dashboard and a watch are not phones. Android Auto has no Display entry because the screen belongs to the car. A Fitbit has no Apps. Roughly a third of the catalogue is not a general-purpose computer at all, and those devices drop whole categories rather than rename them.
Across all 43 first screens there are 341 distinct entry names. That is the real shape of the problem: not a shared vocabulary with local accents, but a long tail.
What this means if you write instructions
Any sentence of the form “go to Settings > Bluetooth” is wrong on most devices. It is right on an iPhone and an iPad, where Bluetooth sits at the top level. It is wrong on a Windows PC, wrong on a Google TV, and wrong on most watches.
This is why support articles age so badly. They are written against one device, usually the author’s, and the path is quietly presented as if it were the path. The reader on a different device does not learn that the instruction does not apply — they learn that they cannot find the setting.
The honest form is to name the destination and let the reader find their own route to it. That is what the find a setting pages do here: one concept, and the real path on each system that has it.
The one thing they do agree on
There is a pattern underneath the names, and it is about order rather than vocabulary. Connectivity comes first on almost every system that has it. Then the screen, then sound, then whatever the device is actually for, then accounts, then the About screen last.
That ordering has survived from Mac OS 9 through Windows XP to Android 17. The labels churn constantly; the running order barely moves. If you are designing a settings menu, that is the convention worth keeping — not any particular word.
How this was counted
Every figure above comes from the settings trees this site is built on: the newest release of each of the 43 systems, top-level entries only, compared after normalising case, ampersands and hyphens so that Wi‑Fi, Wi-Fi and WiFi count as one.
The trees come from each system’s own source where it is open — Android from AOSP, ChromeOS from Chromium, Ubuntu from GNOME — and from the vendor’s published manual where it is not. The whole dataset is published as one file if you want to check the numbers or run your own count.
Try it yourself, on the real menusOpen any of 43 operating systems in your browser and walk the Settings tree exactly as it appears on the device. No download, no account.Frequently asked questions
Is there any setting on all 43 systems?
Not at the top level. Once you look inside the groups, a few concepts do appear everywhere a device could have them — a way to see the software version, and some notion of connectivity on anything with a radio — but no single first-screen entry is shared by all 43.
Why count only the first screen?
Because that is the part a vendor designs deliberately, and it is what a reader sees when they open Settings looking for something. Counting every row at every depth answers a different question: there are 151,612 of those across the 135 releases here.
Do older systems make the numbers worse?
Less than you would expect. Windows 98 and Mac OS 9 group things much as a modern system does. The bigger spread comes from televisions, cars and watches, which drop entire categories rather than rename them.