How in the Tech

Trim Down that Right Click Menu in Windows

By Adam Myers ⋅ July 9, 2008 ⋅ Tags: registry editor, right-click menu, windows tips

Do me a favor, find a file in Explorer and right-click on it. If you are like most users, you’ll have at least a handful of 3rd party programs injected into the context sensitive right-click popup. I install a lot of different programs on my computer, some of which have a habit of polluting this popup with all their various options. Granted, the installers probably provide a way to opt-out of this integration if I had taken more time to poke around in the options. Mea culpa.

I enjoy a clean, stream-lined system and while some of the integration in the right-click menu is handy - like say your anti-virus software - most of it probably isn’t! You may be interested in knowing that having a lot of programs in this popup can actually delay the visual response time - the time you right-click to the time the options are actually displayed. Now, we aren’t talking seconds, but it’s one of those little things that help in providing a snappy and speedy experience in any interface.

So what can you do about it? Well, thankfully this problem is solvable and it centers around our good friend, the Windows Registery.

1. Click Start and in the Start Search box type regedit.exe
2. Traverse the Registry Editor navigation tree on the left hand side down to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\



3. If you expand the ContextMenuHandlers tree you will be presented a list of folders. These are actually the applications that show up in your right-click menu. At this point you have two options to remove the application; either delete the folder here, or alternatively just disable it - which provides an easier way to re-enable the functionality.
4. To disable the application, select it in the left hand panel. Now in the right hand panel, right click on the key and choose Modify.



5. Finally, add a minus (-) before the key value and click OK to apply the change.



6. Refresh your Explorer window and right-click on the file again, noticing that the application has been removed from the popup. If you want to re-enable the application functionality, return to the key above and remove the minus.

It’s actually that easy! You may also be interested in adjust the behavoring of right-click on Folders. It’s the same process as above but instead you should navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\.

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