Five Ways to Use the Windows 10 Context Menu in Windows 11
Updated  by  nm  2026-January-10

cautionThis article is a work in progress.


I have a new (to me) laptop and soon I’ll clean install Windows 11 on it, but before I do that, I’m doing experiments, including messing around with the registry.


Why I wrote this


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 can run on this device.

Method 0: Shift+right-⁠click

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” (which I use all the time). 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 and not acceptable (to me).


Method 1: 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. Thanks Benj Edwards, Nick Lewis, and howtogeek.com!


Method 2: 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.

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 3: Powershell script

A third 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 4: Manually edit the registry

I do not recommend this method, but you can manually edit the registry by launching the Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and drilling down into the appropriate hive and editing the appropriate registry keys. For details, see www.howtogeek.com/759449/how-to-get-full-context-menus-in-windows-11s-file-explorer by Benj Edwards & Nick Lewis.


References


DRAFT