Quick answer: Windows 11 shows a compact modern menu and keeps the full classic menu behind Show more options (or Shift+F10). You can switch to the classic menu permanently with a registry edit or, without one, with Context Menu+ in Productivity Plus Pack, which also lets you design each right-click menu and turn off entries you never use.
Why the menu changed
Over the years, the Windows right-click menu filled up. Every archiver, cloud drive, editor and graphics tool added its own entries, and some of them slowed the menu down or crashed File Explorer.
Windows 11 introduced a new, compact menu to fix that. Common actions — Cut, Copy, Rename, Share and Delete — became icons along the top, and only apps that use the newer integration can add entries to it. Everything else moved behind Show more options.
The result is tidier, but many everyday commands now take an extra click, and it's one of the most talked-about changes in Windows 11. In June 2026, Windows Latest reported that Microsoft plans to let you customize the menu.
Modern vs classic: two menus in one
| Modern menu | Classic menu | |
|---|---|---|
| How you open it | Right-click | Show more options, Shift+F10, or Shift+right-click |
| Common actions | Icons along the top | Text entries |
| Entries from older apps | Not shown | Shown |
| Looks and feels like | Windows 11 | Windows 10 |
If a command you rely on seems to have vanished, it's usually still there — in the classic menu behind Show more options.
Getting the old menu back
There are three ways to use the classic menu:
- One click at a time: choose Show more options, press Shift+F10, or hold Shift while you right-click.
- With a registry edit: the widely shared tweak creates the key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32with an empty default value, then restarts File Explorer. Delete the key to undo it. It works, but it means editing the registry by hand. - With a setting: Context Menu+ in Productivity Plus Pack switches File Explorer between the modern and classic menu from its Settings app — and back again whenever you like.
Step by step: How to get the old right-click menu back in Windows 11.
Designing your own menus
Whichever menu you use, entries you never click still get in the way. Windows doesn't offer a place to turn them off; traditionally that meant hunting through the registry for each app's handler.
Context Menu+ goes much further than switching menus. Choose Customize... on its Settings page to open a menu builder where you decide exactly what each right-click menu looks like:
- Pick the menu you want to design: the desktop, folders and folder backgrounds, drives, all files or specific file types, the Recycle Bin — and even the Start button, the taskbar, taskbar apps and the taskbar clock.
- Choose which commands appear, in what order, and in which submenus. Drag in commands from Windows, from your apps and your own Commands+ commands, and add separators and submenus where you want them.
- Turn off entries you never use, from any app — and from Productivity Plus Pack itself.
- Choose the look with a light, dark or custom theme.
- Take your layouts with you: export all of them to a file and import them on another PC.
Adding your own commands
The right-click menu is also a great place for your own tools: open a folder in your favorite editor, run a script on the selected files, or convert a file with a command-line tool.
Commands+, part of Context Menu+, lets you add commands with:
- A name, an icon, and the program or script to run — optionally as administrator.
- Where they appear: on the desktop, on folders, on all files, or only on file types such as
*.txtor*.jpg. - Variables such as
$first_selected_path,$all_selected_pathsand Windows environment variables like%USERNAME%. - Prompts that ask you for a value — or let you pick from a list — before the command runs.
- A shortcut: press Ctrl+Win+Alt+G followed by a number key (1-9) to run a command without opening the menu.
Useful commands worth having
A few right-click commands in Productivity Plus Pack that people find themselves using every day:
- Paste as — save a copied image or text straight into the folder as a file. How-to
- Organize folder — sort a messy folder by file type, or photos by date and place. How-to
- Tags and ratings — tag and rate any common file type. How-to
- New++ — create files and folders from your own templates.
- Comment — add a searchable note to a file. How-to
Using PowerToys too? Its right-click entries, such as PowerRename and Image Resizer, work alongside these, and Context Menu+ lets you decide which ones show up. See Works even better with PowerToys and other great tools.