6+ Ways to Quit Using the Annoying Windows 11 Context Menu⁠🍔
Updated  by  nm  2026-February-10

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Why I wrote this

I have a new (to me) laptop and soon I’ll Clean Install Windows⁠🧹 on it, but before I do that, I’m doing experiments on this soon-to-be-erased operating system. My goals are…


Prerequisites

This article assumes you are comfortable…


Before you begin

  1. Create a Windows restore point, which you can learn about in support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/system-protection-e9126e6e-fa64-4f5f-874d-9db90e57645a.
  2. Launch PowerShell in a terminal emulator and run Get-ExecutionPolicy. This will tell you what kind of PowerShell scripts you currently can run on this device.

Ways to avoid this annoying context menu

Below I describe 6+ ways to do this. Method 1 is for temporary one-off use. Methods 2 through 6+ are for permanent use and require editing the Windows registry.

important

Before you use method 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6+, create a Windows restore point!




Temporarily

Method 1: Shift+Right-Click (not recommended)

When you Right-Click an item on the Desktop or in Windows Explorer, a context menu pops up. In Windows 10, this is a long list that includes things like “Edit with Vim.”2 In Windows 11, this is a short list and to see the long list you need to do one of the following.

Each of these is an annoyance.😒



Permanently via the registry

Method 2: Manually edit the registry (not recommended)

You can manually edit the Windows registry by launching the Registry Editor (regedit.exe), drilling down to the appropriate registry hive, and editing the appropriate registry keys and values. For details, see www.howtogeek.com/759449/how-to-get-full-context-menus-in-windows-11s-file-explorer by Benj Edwards & Nick Lewis.

Because this way of editing the registry is prone to mistakes, I do not recommend it. Instead, I recommend that you use method 3, 4, 5, or 6+ below.


Method 3: Double click win11_classic_context_menu.reg

After a bunch of experiments, I’ve decided that the easiest way to restore the Windows 10 context menu is to double click this win11_classic_context_menu.reg file:


Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}]
@=""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32]
@=""


For this registry change to take effect, do one of the following.

Details about this .reg “one-click registry hack” are in this section of www.howtogeek.com/759449/how-to-get-full-context-menus-in-windows-11s-file-explorer. Thank you Benj Edwards, Nick Lewis, and howtogeek.com!


tip

To make this win11_classic_context_menu.reg file available on all your Windows devices, put it in your shared or synced Dotfiles directory. To learn about my Dotfiles strategy, see Infinite Ink’s Using the Cloud to Sync Dotfiles.



Method 4: Run a command-line command

An alternative is to launch PowerShell in a terminal and run this command:

reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve


For this to take effect, you need to either restart Windows or restart Windows Explorer (discussed in Method 3 above).

Details about this are in askleo.com/restore-the-right-click-menu-in-windows-11/. Thanks Leo!


note

For this to work, you might need to launch PowerShell as an administrator.



Method 5: Run a PowerShell script

Another alternative, and probably the best way to do this, is to run this RestoreOldContextMenu.ps1 PowerShell script by Aviad Ofek:


# PowerShell Script to Restore Old Context Menu in Windows 11

<# 
    Script Name: RestoreOldContextMenu.ps1
    Description: This script restores the old right-click context menu in Windows 11 by modifying
                 a specific registry key. After updating the registry, it restarts the File Explorer
                 to apply the changes. Please run this script with administrative privileges.
    Author: Aviad Ofek
    Date: April 2024
#>

# This command adds the necessary registry key to enable the old context menu
reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve

# Restart the Explorer process to apply the changes
Stop-Process -Name explorer -Force
Start-Process explorer


Details are in github.com/aviado1/Restore-Old-Context-Menu-in-Windows-11. Thanks Aviad!


important

To Run this or any Powershell script, you might need to use PowerShell’s Set-ExecutionPolicy to set an appropriate execution policy for your system.



Method 6+: Windows tweak tools that can do this particular registry edit

A lot of debloat and tweak tools have “Use classic context menu” as one of the options. An example of such a tool is Winhance. More tweak and debloat tools are listed at alternativeto.net/category/utilities/system-tweaker/.



References



Endnotes


  1. The old Windows 10 Right-⁠Click context menu is sometimes called the classic context menu. ↩︎

  2. To learn one way to get “Edit with Vim” in your context menu, see Infinite Ink’s Installing GVim and Vim on Windows. The key is to check “Add Vim Context Menu” in step 3C. ↩︎