Opinion
I get irritated by the context menu (right-click menu, shortcut menu) for Windows file explorer getting cluttered with functions I never use. The long list of functions slow down the display of the menu, and worse, makes me take too long hunting through the list of options for the one I want.
Mine, right now, looks like this. There's five entries I'd like to get rid of.
There is no place in Windows to edit remove them, other than editing the registry, which I really don't want to do.
There are some utilities, like CCleaner, that offer to remove them, but they do not do a thorough job. So, I looked for and found a utility that does work: shexview -- short for Shell Extension Viewer, which you can download free from Nirsoft at https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html. This utility edits 12 kinds of Windows menu extensions.
Using it to edit the context menu is not straightforward, so here's how to do it:
- Download and install Shexview.exe
- Start Shexview, and wait while it loads all context menus
- Click the Type column to sort them alphabetically.
- Look for Context Menu items.
- Now look for the names of applications whose menus you want to disable. There will probably be more than one.
- Right-click each one you want to disable, then choose Disable Selected Items.
When done, exit the program, and the right-click an item in File Manager to see the context menu looking more streamlined.
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