How to Custom Right-Click Menu Options in Windows

The easiest (and safest) way to alter the right-click menu can be done by opening up any folder. Choose "Tools" from the top menu, then "Folder Options."

Click on the "File Types" tab. From here, you can highlight the file type you want to change, then click the "Advanced" button to change the menu options that appear for the file type.

However, there are things that can't be done in the "File Types" menu. For complete customization of your our right-click options, it's time to edit the Registry. Note: editing the Windows Registry can seriously screw up your computer. So proceed with some caution.

Open the Registry Editor by opening the Start Menu and typing "regedit" in the Run box. It may be a good idea to back up the registry at this point.

How to add a new right-click menu option

Open HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, which contains a list of known file extensions (.exe, .html, .ini, .bat) follwed by extension groups. An extension group usually contains file types that have muliple extensions associated with them - for example "htmlfile" refers to all files with ".htm" and ".html" extensions, and "jpegfile" refers to .jpg and .jpeg files.

Select the extension or extension group you wish to modify - typically, you will want to modify an extension group, rather than an individual extension. In this example we want to add an "Edit" option to batch files (.bat extension) so we can easily open it in Notepad2.

Expand "batfile", then expand "shell". Right click on "shell" and select New -> Key.

Name the new key "Edit" (or whatever you want to appear on the right-click menu). Right-click on the new key, and select New -> Key to create a subkey. Name the subkey Command. Note that in the right-hand window, the name (Default) and (value not set) appear.

Double-click on (Default), or the small "ab" icon to the left, to bring up an Edit window. In the "value data" field, enter the full path for the program you want to run, in this format: FOLDERNAME\PROGRAMNAME %1

For example, when I created this key, it looked like this: %SystemRoot%\System32\NOTEPAD2.EXE %1

This tells Notepad2 to open "%1", which will be replaced with the name of the file we clicked on.

Note that the menu options are listed in the order in which they were created. The simplest way to reorder the options is to rename the option that you want to appear at the end of the list. Right-click on the key in the Registry Editor and select "Rename", rename it to a temporary name, then rename it back to its original. Now it will appear at the top of the right-click menu.

How to remove an option from the right-click menu

Sometimes software will add new options to the right-click menu. For example, when I installed an ATI driver for my video card, it added "ATI CATALYST(R) Control Center" to the top of the right-click menu on my desktop. Because I constantly config my video card, right?

Usually, all that is required is to remove the appropriate key under the shellex\ContextMenuHandlers key in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for file type "*". If you're the cautious type, backup the key before you delete it, in case things go horribly wrong.

If you don't find the correct ContextMenuHandlers item under "*" you could try looking under specific file extensions. You could also try searching the registry for the text that appears on the menu. When searching, don't forget to preface any character that is underlined in the menu with an "&". The ampersand is typically used to identify the character to underline when a menu entry's text is saved in the registry.

Once you're done, you can export your changes to a .reg file by using regedit's export menu option. This creates a file that, when double-clicked, automatically adds your changes to the registry.