Modify Title of Context Menu Item

Phil Lloyd · 28 May 2018

I have customized my context menus a bit, so I am familiar with some aspects (registry locations, apps to do that), but I have one hope to modify the title of existing context menu items.
I would like to simply shorten some titles to make the right-click context menu narrower.

If it is too difficult I might instead try to remove the items and recreate them myself under the "sendto" category or my own added category.

I would rather just alter the titles of some if not too difficult, but none of the programs i have checked out seem to give access to that and I have been unable to find any place in the registry to modify some.
I seem to recall modifying a couple some years ago, but things have changed..

Any tips?

Berton · 28 May 2018

Phil Lloyd said:

Any tips?

Only 1, the next Version Upgrade would probably wipe out all such customizations, would have to redo them. Keep records of what you accomplish and how you did it to do them quicker next time. It's also possible a Build update could also change things.

dalchina · 28 May 2018

This is curiously difficult. No one utility seems to offer a complete list of context menu entries as far as I know.

For example, using Shellmenuview, you can access the relevant entry in Regedit. For some it appears to offer the ability to change that text:

That's an installed program.

For others, it doesn't.

(That's a default Windows program....).

Note too the text appears in multiple places where the program is associated with multiple extensions.

The venerable ContextMenuEdit allows you to edit the text, but again, this is non-trivial- consider here the extension list supported by vlc player, undifferentiated in the left column:

To be consistent, each one would have to be edited- then if you changed player, all that would be lost.

Basically this, I suggest, is not worth pursuing except in very specific cases should there be a real need.

Considering the impact of upgrading, changes to installed program context menu entries should not be affected. Changes to Windows default entries- if that's even feasible, which I doubt, as I believe the text isn't in the registry, would be restored to default.