While Windows 10 has definitely gotten better in terms of functionality and overall stability, it never ceases to amaze me that Microsoft still doesn’t take user experience seriously. For example, if you use a lot of third-party applications on your PC, the right-click menu becomes complicated with numerous application extensions and there is no special settings page to remove these items. Sometimes, due to heavy extensions in the right-click menu, you start getting a delayed response which makes it even more frustrating. However, there are some easy ways to fix the problem. In this post, I will show you how to customize the right-click menu in Windows 10 with a step-by-step guide.
Customize Right Click Menu in Windows 10 with ShellExView
We are going Use a popular utility called ShellExView which was developed by Nirsoft. It is a fairly lightweight program and is completely free. The app allows you to disable context menus, filter extensions and more. So with all that said, let’s get to the steps.
1. Download ShellExView (Free) and install it on your computer.
2. Open the app and click “Options” in the menu bar. Here, enable “Hide All Microsoft Entries” so that you can only find third-party apps with the context menu.
3. Now review the list and disable apps you don’t want to see in right click menu. To do this, right-click on the extension name and select Disable Selected Items. This much.
4. To reflect the changes, Restart the Windows Explorer process. Therefore, open the “Options” menu again and click on “Restart Explorer”.
5. Now right click on any file or folder and you won’t find any unnecessary apps in the context menu. Enjoy the minimal look!
6. If you also want to clean Microsoft stuff From the right click menu, then enable Microsoft Logins in step 2. Then go through the list carefully and disable accordingly. When dealing with system menus, be sure to proceed carefully.
Manually Customize Right-Click Menu in Windows 10
If you are someone who wants to do things manually, this section is for you. you can easily Customize the right-click menu in Windows 10 via Registry Editor and without downloading any third party software. Here’s how to do it.
1. Search for “Registry” in the Windows search bar and open it.
2. Next, Paste the address below into the address bar of Registry Editor and hit enter.
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
3. Here you will find all third-party context menus in the form of folders. All you have to do is right click on the folder and delete. You’re done.
Clearing the Right-Click Menu of Unnecessary Items
This was our short guide on how to remove unnecessary apps from the right-click menu. We mentioned two methods as described above and both are pretty easy. However, I would recommend going with ShellExView as it is a lightweight and simple utility. As for me, I always like to keep my menus short and useful, so this tool works wonders for my PC. Anyway, that’s it for us. If you want to know more about Windows 10 and some nifty gadgets, comment below and let us know.
