Add and remove items from the Windows Explorer right-click menu

Posted on December 29, 2008 at 5:30 am

Have you ever right-clicked on a file or folder in Windows Explorer and had to wait a few seconds for the context menu to appear? This slowness when right-clicking occurs because there are simply too many programs that add their own entry the list.

At one point, my computer had 15 to 20 items in the right-click menu for Windows Explorer! Even if it wasn’t slow, which is was, it would have still taken me a few seconds to find what I was looking for.

Earlier, I wrote about a free program called File Menu Tools that lets you customize the right-click menu in Explorer. It’s a good program, but it has a bit too much going on and can be quite confusing for beginners.

Then I wrote about how you can manually edit the right-click menu for Explorer by editing the registry itself, however that is really not meant for a beginner. So that’s where you’ll like to know about this new program.

MenuMaid is a nifty little free ware app that makes enabling and disabling items in the right-click menu a cinch! Once you install the program, which is only a measly 123 KB, you’ll see two tabs, Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer.

Each tab is further broken down into Categories, including Everything, Directories, Drives, and Folders. Note that this is because when you right-click on a drive, you get a different context menu than if you were to right-click on a folder.

Of course, some items appear when you right-click on any object, and you’ll see those items in each category. To remove an item, just uncheck it and it should be gone immediately, no need to restart your computer, etc.

Overall, it’s a very simple app that does only one thing and does it well. I now use this program instead of File Menu Tools or messing with the registry to edit the right-click menu. Enjoy!

» Filed Under Free Software Downloads