The settings panel rewrite

Every settings page eventually becomes a graveyard. New toggles get added, old ones never get removed, and the second tab nobody opens accumulates a decade of features.

We rewrote ours with three rules. One: every setting has a default that 90% of users want. Two: any setting that hasn't been changed by anyone in 90 days is a candidate for deletion. Three: no setting exists to compensate for a missing decision — if the team can't pick a default, the feature isn't done.

The new panel is a third the size and twice as fast to navigate. The hardest part was not the rewrite; it was getting permission to delete things.