Creating Cascading Menus with Shortcuts to Favorite Applications in the Windows 7 Context Menu

A terrible name, but did not come up with how to say it easier.
Actually, the article itself:

In the course of this article we will discuss how to add links to your favorite programs in the context menu of the Windows desktop or “My Computer”.

The instruction is divided into 2 parts:

1. Creating cascading menus in the context menu and adding shortcuts.
2. Adding functionality to shortcuts by registering them.

Let's start ...

Part 1. Create context menus and add shortcuts

1. Open the registry editor (type “regedit” in the “Run” line or in the search bar on the “Start” menu and press Enter).

2. Go to the following branch:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell

If you want to add a cascading menu to the context menu of “My Computer”, then go to this branch:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\shell

3. Now you need to create a new registry key in the "Shell" section. Right-click on the Shell key and select Create -> Partition. Give it some original and inimitable name, for example, “Menu1” (without quotes).

4. Now select the just created section “Menu1”. In the right part of the window, we need to create 4 string parameters:

1. Muiverb
2. Subcommands
3. Icon
4. Position

You can not create Icon and Position parameters (they are optional), but MUIVerb and SubCommands are required.

MUIVerb is the name of the cascading menu that will be displayed in the context menu. You can name it whatever you like, for example, “Applications”, “Browsers”, etc.

SubCommands contains a list of commands separated by a semicolon (;). These commands will be shown in the cascade menu. You cannot directly add an application shortcut. First, in this list you need to give the team a name, and then register it according to the instructions in Part 2 of the article.

5. Let's clarify the string parameter “SubCommands”.

Suppose that you have already created a cascading menu “Apps” (the translator is reluctant to take screenshots himself, so he did not translate this word), as described in paragraph 3, and now you want to add the Notepad (notepad) and Calculator (calculator) shortcuts to it . In this case, you need to set this value to the “SubCommands” parameter:

notepad;calc

you can use the Notepad and Calculator commands, but in this case you will need to use them in 2 parts of this instruction.





6. The Icon parameter is used to display the icon. In our example, its value is explorer.exe , therefore the “Browsers” cascading menu has an icon so hot with everyone’s favorite browser.



7. The “Position” parameter is used to determine the position of the cascading menu in the context menu. By default, this is the middle of the context menu, but you can choose Top (top) or Bottom (bottom).

8. You can create more than one menu by again going through points 3 and 4.

Part 1. Adding functionality to shortcuts by registering them

Once you add program shortcuts to cascading menus, you will need to register them as follows:

1. Go to the next section :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\Shell

2. In this section, we need to create new keys for each of the commands specified earlier in the SubCommands string parameter .

In our example, we used 2 commands: notepad andcalc , so we need to create two keys in the "CommandStore \ Shell" section with the same names.

3. After creating the key, select it and in the right part of the registry editor window, set the Default parameter to the name that you want to see in the cascade menu. For example, enter Notepad or Calculator or any other line here.

4. If you also want to add an icon to the shortcut, create a new string parameter named icon and set its value to the path to the application's EXE file or any other icon. For example, to display the notepad icon, you must set the Icon parameter to notepad.exe

5. And now the last step! In each of the keys you just created, create a new key and name it command .
Select it and in the right part of the window set Default to the path to the EXE file of the required program. For example, if the shortcut should open notepad, then Command should be set to notepad.exe



PS: Notepad is a native Windows application, so you can not specify the full path to it, but if you want to run a third-party program, you must specify full path to its exe file.

The author in the original text gives ready-made reg-files, so you can take them as a basis and do it all much faster.

PS I ask you not to kick much - this is my first full-fledged post on the hub

UPD In the comments, they asked about ready-made reg-files. I add.

Desktop context menu: My Computer context menu: Note : If you want to delete the created cascade menu, simply delete the keys created in paragraph 3 of the first part and paragraph 2 of the second part of the article. UPD 2. Moved the topic to the blog "Windows 7", because, as I see it, such a topic is popular there :)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Menu1]
"MUIVerb"="Apps"
"SubCommands"="notepad;calc"
"icon"="explorer.exe"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\notepad]
@="Notepad"
"icon"="notepad.exe"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\notepad\command]
@="notepad.exe"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\calc]
@="Calculator"
"icon"="calc.exe"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\calc\command]
@="calc.exe"



Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Menu1]
"MUIVerb"="Apps"
"SubCommands"="notepad;calc"
"icon"="explorer.exe"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\notepad]
@="Notepad"
"icon"="notepad.exe"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\notepad\command]
@="notepad.exe"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\calc]
@="Calculator"
"icon"="calc.exe"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\calc\command]
@="calc.exe"