So I've recently been looking into the Control Panel, to try to see how I might be able to create a custom applet for it, like sometimes you get a custom one when you use a printer, and I just can't seem to figure out how to make one. I've tried opening one of them in a code editing software, and assume that they are compiled as all I get is a bunch of random characters, but I'm not quite sure whether it is or not. I've looked for anything related to it, but the closest thing to an answer I have is something about trying to make the applet show up, but it doesn't say how it's made, so its not really useful. Thanks in advance.

CodePudding user response：

There are two types of control panel applets:

• .Exe files. These are normal applications and can be written in any language.

• .Cpl files. These are actually normal .DLL files and can be written in anything that can produce a PE DLL with a named exported function (C/C , Delphi or if you must, C#).

Support for .Exe applets started in Vista and is now the preferred method according to Microsoft.