In this blog post, we’ll show you how to easily clean up your context menu in no time. It requires a little bit of tinkering with Windows, but if you follow our instructions you’ll find it easy to follow. Let’s do it:
All entries that show up under your “Right-click menu” or “Context menu” are stored in a rather secret location, called the Windows registry. Here’s how to open it:
- Hold down the “WINDOWS” key on your keyboard and then press the “R” button. This will bring up the following screen:
- Type in “regedit” and hit Enter.
I recommend creating a back up before making any changes
- To create a backup, simply click on “FileExport” and type in the file name.
- Next, open the following folders: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellexContextMenuHandlers. All the folders you see below represent entries in the right-click menu:
OK, let’s move on to actually getting rid of that folder. So, for example, the “AVG Shredder Shell Extension” folder represents the following item:If you like to get rid of it, simply delete that entire “Folder”.
- In this example, I want to get rid of the entry for a nice desktop organization tool called “Fences” that I use a lot. Click on “FencesShellExt” (don’t touch the OpenWith or WorkFolders entries, though!) and hit the “Delete” key on my keyboard.
Now, once I cleaned it up, my context menu looks very clean:Plus, you may even be able to solve problems related to the context menus and delays when working with files.
Pro Tip:
If you’d like to add or remove items in your “Create New…” menu there’s a great (and much easier) solution for you. All you need is AVG PC TuneUp:
- Once installed, go to “Personalize” and click on the “Personalize and behaviors”.
- Head over to “File Types” and “New”
- In this area you can easily get rid (or even add!) items that appear under the “New” menu, which I personally like to keep very clean as I only create a few files that way.
Got any questions? Let us know!