Restore the classic context menu in Windows 11

This article was first published on 2022/03/22 on the LIZHI.SHOP WeChat official account (shumalizhi), and has been synced here with appropriate adjustments.

Three months after I upgraded to Windows 11, I had gotten fairly used to most of the new designs, but the context menu is the one thing I really want to complain about.

Although the Windows 11 context menu looks better and is more refined, it also sacrifices convenience.

In daily use, many apps still haven't adapted to the Windows 11 context menu, so you often have to right-click and then click Show more options one more time to reveal all functions.

It's very troublesome to use. In the comments, I also noticed that some readers ran into similar problems. Today I'll share several methods to help you restore the classic Windows 11 context menu, making it easier to use.

Keyboard shortcuts

In Windows 11, you can use a keyboard shortcut to bring up the context menu. After selecting a file, press Shift + F10 to bring up the classic context menu.

In the recent Windows 11 preview build (Build 22572) released by Microsoft, Windows 11 still uses a two-tier menu, but it provides a simpler operation: hold Shift and then right-click to open the classic context menu directly.

Use mouse gestures

But I don't think the methods above are convenient enough!

Since you need both the keyboard and mouse, why not just use mouse gestures? So I thought of WGestures 2, a mouse gesture app.

Create a new gesture and have it trigger the keyboard shortcut Shift + F10. Then you just select a file and draw the gesture to bring up the classic menu style.

There are more mouse gesture tricks waiting for you to unlock.

Those interested can learn more about this tool at LIZHI.SHOP. Mouse gestures can perform various actions such as launching programs / keypresses / window control / web search, and also support AppleScript or Cmd / Lua scripts.

Edit the Registry directly

What? You think that's still not direct enough? I'll introduce one more simple, brute-force method: modifying the Registry.

And someone has already made a packaged utility: Windows 11 Classic Context Menu.

Just click to modify it, restart File Explorer, and you can switch the context menu back to the classic style.

Of course, you can also switch back to the Windows 11 default style. This utility doesn't require you to manually modify Registry parameters, so it's quite convenient to use.

Download: https://sourl.cn/giCJnQ

Which of the three solutions above do you prefer? Of course, I believe more apps will become compatible with the Windows 11 context menu in the future. If you have other better solutions, feel free to leave a comment and share them with everyone!