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. Step Open the registry editor
2. Step Uncollapse HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\
3. Step Create a new key as seen here (right-click on Shell and click New -> Key)
4. Step Enter a name of your choice, I called the context menu item “GetIt” (I’m retrieving some information via batch script)
5. Step Create a new subkey called command as seen here:
6. Step 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. Step 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. Step 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. Step Create a key for Steam, including command subkey with path to Steam as explained above
2. Step Click on Steam and in the right pane right-click and click on New -> Expandable String Value
3. Step Enter the name Icon
4. Step 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.
