Context -right click – menu

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I’m frustrated with trying to utilize efficiently and tidy up my right-click context menu.   It seems to me it is a very messy business.   I have a number of generic (and perhaps specific) context menu utilities, but they all seem to have so many options that I cannot figure it out.

Is there any way to delete all context menu choices ‘en bloc’ and then just selectively include those that I actually use?   Would this be a wise thing to do?

It seems to me that almost always all I want to do is to select a file and choose “copy path to clipboard” – and the 20 other options seem to get in my way.  Many of the choices (when I look at my management utilities) are somewhat obscure as to what they are actually doing….   Am I the only one who finds this somewhat awkward?

I know, perhaps I am being a bit obsessive – but I’d appreciate any advice about this topic of ‘context menu management’ from the big picture.

Cheers in confusioin.   Richard

 

 

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depending what you “right click” on, you get a different set of choices.
customizing may be a “moving target”

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I feel your pain. This is especially annoying when working with photos. You need to go to the bottom of the context menu and tap on the tiny down arrow point to get to the bottom of the context menu to select copy, print or properties.

Is there a way to reorder things so that the most useful are at the top of the context menu?

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BTDT.

The problem is there isn’t a single location in the Windows registry that controls what appears in the “right-click” menus.

The 2 primary locations for the “standard” file right-click options are:

• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers

• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers

But the same ContextMenuHandler key also exist in other locations in the registry for “other” right-click options that are only for a specific file type (.txt, .doc, .jpg, etc.) or object (Desktop, Drive, Taskbar, etc.)

Additionally, “some” programs add their own right-click options when installed which aren’t in any of the “standard” locations in the registry and they don’t provide a way to either not add them during the installation process or to turn them off from their configuration menu once installed.

All that makes it very difficult to track down exactly where the control command for specific right-click option exists so it can be disabled.

However, there are a number of 3rd party apps out there designed to help you take control of your right-click menu.

• 11 Best Context Menu Editors for Windows

I’ve personally used the top 3 items in that list (ShellMenuView, ShellExView and FileMenu Tools — which are all “free“) and, while they do work for the context items they can locate, they aren’t always able to find all the items shown in a right-click context menu.

In a few instances, especially for those programs I mentioned that add context-menu items and provide no way to disable them, I’ve had to resort to hunting thru the registry to find the location that controls a particular context menu item so I could disable it manually.

Good luck!

2 users thanked author for this post.

Richard Merchant, NaNoNyMouse

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As a compromise, for the items mentioned in the original post & in the 3rd post of this thread, more use could/should be made of the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) in a folders ‘Title Bar’ (Note: the QAT can be moved below the Ribbon).
Simply open a folder holding the images, select an image to activate the ‘Ribbon’ and r/click items to add to the QAT from the ‘Tabs’ available.
The ‘Properties’ tab should be there by default.
The options are limited and in no way replaces the ‘Right Click Context Menu’ but it can have its uses.
If you don’t have the ‘Ribbon’ showing by default, simply d/click a Tab (Home, Share, View as examples and the ‘Ribbon’ will reveal. You can also use the small up/down arrow at the right side of the Tab Bar or press the Ctrl + F keys.

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Well, I used Ashampoo Winoptimizer’s ‘context menu manager’ utility to look at them.

There were ~15o items there  (on my laptop – my desktop has 306 entries…) so I went in and disabled them all.   What do they say – ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’?  Well, that didn’t work so well – a whole bunch of things wouldn’t work any more, including opening programs from the taskbar and so on.

Fortunately a system restore brought everything back to life.  Oh well, it was never going to be easy.  I think it means either that Winoptimizers’ context menu utility looks at more than it should, or that Windows uses the thing for more than is apparent…

I did try using a couple of the other contex menu programs but they were not very helpful.   Many many of the things that appeared were not listed in their findings, supporting the suggestion that there are more than a few places in the Registry where such stuff is found.

Lots of odd entries in the  Winoptimizer findings.   Lots with odd registry entry types of names, not self explanatory, apparently referring to ‘Windows Shell Common DLL’ in the ‘ShellFolder’ type.   It would be a bit too tedious to go through defeating such things one by one simply to test.   Seems like a nice programmer would have made such stuff self-explanatory, but I guess that is asking too much.

Minor work in progress.

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Try one of the 11 free programs which were recommended to you in this thread.

Windows 11 Pro version 22H2 build 22621.2361 + Microsoft 365 + Edge

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Well, I don’t want to be churlish, but I did point out that I was asking for ‘help’; perhaps not emphasizing that I’m really looking for help in a sophisticated way.   I’m quite capable of googling for context menu utilities, and I did point out that I had tried a couple (actually more than a couple) of the recommended programs that were in fact not very helpful nor sophisticated.

I also note that I had tried a program which came up with a lot of entries – way more than any of the other freeware programs – but many were somewhat obscure entries that caused problems when fiddled with.

So I thank ‘b’ for the contribution but I wonder if there is not a contributor with some experties in this area who could offer a knowledgable answer to this minor but vexing problem?   ELIJR above seems really to have hit the nail on the head in describing the complexity of the issue.

 

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