Settings menus only grow
Every release adds a few settings and almost never removes any. Fourteen years of that compounds. We counted every row on every screen of 135 releases to find out how much, and the answer is not evenly distributed — one of the biggest operating systems in the world is also one of the leanest.
Fourteen years of iPhone settings
iOS 6 shipped a settings app with 443 rows across every screen, nested at most four levels deep. iOS 27 has 4,555 rows and goes nine levels deep.
That is ten times the content, and more than twice the depth, in roughly fourteen years. Depth is the part that matters for finding things: four levels is a menu you can hold in your head, nine is a filing system.
The growth is not one big jump. It is per-app permissions, then per-app notification styles, then Screen Time, then Focus modes, then privacy reports — each one reasonable on its own, each one a new branch.
How fast each system is growing
Comparing the oldest and newest release carried for each system gives a growth rate. The spread is wide:
| System | From | To | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| CarPlay | 16.6 — 98 rows | 27 — 140 rows | +43% |
| Windows Phone | 8.0 — 276 rows | 8.1 — 337 rows | +22% |
| macOS | 13 — 2,301 rows | 27 — 2,628 rows | +14% |
| ChromeOS | 120 — 1,437 rows | 151 — 1,635 rows | +14% |
| Ubuntu | 22.04 — 845 rows | 26.04 — 947 rows | +12% |
| Android | 13 — 2,793 rows | 17 — 3,041 rows | +9% |
| iOS | 16.7 — 4,403 rows | 27.0 — 4,555 rows | +3% |
CarPlay grows fastest because it started with almost nothing. iOS grows slowest in percentage terms because it is already enormous — but 3% of 4,403 is still 152 new rows, which is more than the whole of Android Auto.
The surprise: Windows is lean
Windows has a reputation for sprawl, largely because it kept the old Control Panel alongside the new Settings app for a decade. But the modern Settings app is small:
| System | Rows | Depth |
|---|---|---|
| iOS 27 | 4,555 | 9 |
| Android 17 | 3,041 | 6 |
| macOS 27 | 2,628 | 5 |
| Windows 11 | 1,144 | 5 |
Windows 11 carries a quarter of what an iPhone carries, and is four levels shallower. Some of that is genuine — Windows pushes device configuration into Device Manager and policy into other tools rather than into Settings. But the shape is real: the system people describe as cluttered has the flattest settings tree of the four.
What growth costs the reader
A deeper tree is not only more to read. It changes what the menu is for. At four levels you can browse — open Settings, scan, find it. At nine you cannot, and the vendor knows it, which is why every one of these systems added a search box to Settings on the way up.
It also makes written instructions decay faster. A path that is five segments long has five chances to be renamed. Comparing Android 13 with Android 17 turns up 1,415 individual changes to settings rows; Windows 10 to Windows 11 is 3,140.
How this was measured
Each release here is a complete settings tree, not a snapshot of the first screen: sections, screens, rows, and the options inside each row. Counting every row at every depth across all 135 releases gives 151,612 rows on 31,937 screens.
Growth figures compare the oldest and newest release carried for a system, which is not the same as its entire history — iOS 6 is carried separately from the modern iOS line, so it does not appear in the iOS growth row above. The full dataset is downloadable if you want to slice it differently.
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
Do settings ever get removed?
Yes, but far fewer than are added. In the Android 13 to 17 comparison, additions outnumber removals by a wide margin, and most removals are a setting moving rather than disappearing — it comes back one level deeper under a new group.
Why does iOS go nine levels deep?
Mostly per-app and per-contact configuration. A path like Settings › Accessibility › Touch › AssistiveTouch › Single-Tap already spends five levels before it reaches a choice, and privacy screens that list every installed app add another two.
Is a bigger settings menu worse?
Not inherently — it usually means the system gives you more control. It is worse for discovery, which is why search became standard. The measurable cost is to anyone writing instructions, because longer paths change more often.