Start automatically detects all applications via Spotlight. Additionally you can add other files or folders to Start. But what about the system settings, for example? Can these also be accessed simply via Start?

The short answer: yes. However, system settings are not applications in the true sense of the word, so they are not automatically included. But you can easily add them to Start yourself.

You can find the individual sections of the System Preferences in macOS in the following folder:

/System/Library/PreferencePanes

These are files with the extension "prefPane". The name of the file refers to the respective area in the System Preferences - so the whole thing is more or less self-explanatory.

You can now easily add the desired prefPane files either by drag and drop or by menu entry to Start. The most sensible way to do this is as follows: First you drag a file into Start. Now search for this file in the "Files" area and assign a new tag to the file - for example "System-Settings". Once you have assigned this new tag, the tag will appear in the left area of Start in the tag list. Now you can easily drag the rest of the files directly to the new tag - this will both add the files to Start and assign them to the tag at the same time.

Important: Start allows a maximum of 25 files at a time via DragNDrop. This protection was built in so that complete directory structures are not added by mistake.