Customize PC: How To Add New Items To Context Menu in Windows 7 / 8 With Icons
You want to customize your PC? How about adding new items to your context menu, e.g. notepad++, Firefox, Steam or any other program?
Modifying Registry To Add New Context Menu Items
Tip: Before you follow this, make sure to backup your Windows 7 registry , respectively your Windows 8 registry
1. Open the registry editor
2. Uncollapse HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\
3. Create a new key as seen here (right-click on Shell and click New -> Key)
4. Enter a name of your choice, I called the context menu item “GetIt” (I’m retrieving some information via batch script)
5. Create a new subkey called command as seen here:
6. Ok, if you now right-click on a file within the Windows explorer you can now see a new item called GetIt or whatever you called it. We are now adding a command that should be executed.
7. Select the key command in the left pane and then in the right pane, double-click on Default and enter the path to your program or batch script e.g. C:\Windows\notepad.exe or C:\test\batch.bat or C:\Program Files\Mozilla\Firefox.exe and so on
Add Steam, Firefox, Programs To Context Menu
8. As seen on the image above, you can simply enter a path to a program. Keep in mind you need to select the subkey command first or it won’t work if you modify the REG_SZ entry for “GetIt”
This is how you can also add notepad.exe or Firefox to your context menu quite easily.
Simply enter as path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe and you can start Steam from your right-click menu
Adding Context Menu Items With Icons
Ok, you have successfully added Steam to your context menu? Cool, now let’s add the icon!
1. Create a key for Steam, including command subkey with path to Steam as explained above
2. Click on Steam and in the right pane right-click and click on New -> Expandable String Value
3. Enter the name Icon
4. Enter the path to your Steam.exe file again e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe (it includes the icon file)
As you can see it’s very easy to add new context menu items that you can quickly access via right-click. You can now completely customize your PC and add programs that you launch frequently or batch scripts to increase your productivity.
Or you might like these sexy wallpaper, tweaks and themes:
Written by oliversk Friday, December 30th, 2011
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