I think it would help a lot if many settings items could be filtered, I think that would help a lot. Settings for windows 10 for desktop/tablet has a similar problem. I don't just mean the main page with iconed settings, but also their subpage's, which have just as many, if not, more items.
My suggestion: provide a filter menu at the top of settings to filter according to:
1. relevance
2. alphabetical order
3. most used
4. recently used
5. recently updated
6. z->a order