Open the Registry Editor by hitting Start and typing “regedit.”
Unfortunately, the items populating your context menu are not all located in the same place in the Registry.
You can find most of the context menu items used for both files and folders by drilling down to one of the following keys in the navigation pane on the left:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFileSystemObjects\ShellEx
You’ll find context menu items specific to just folders in one of these keys instead:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
Here’s how we get rid of that menu item. In Registry Editor, drill down to the following key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\AddtoPlaylistVLC
We have a few options on how to handle this. We could just delete that AddToPlaylistVLC key entirely, and that would remove the item from the context menu.
The second option is to disable the key instead of deleting it. To do that, just right-click the AddToPlaylistVLC key—or whatever key you’re working with—and choose New > String Value. Name the new string value “LegacyDisable.”
You also have a third option. If you occasionally use a menu item, but don’t want it cluttering up your regular context menu, you can hide it away on the extended context menu you see only when you hold Shift while right-clicking a file or folder. To do this, right-click the AddToPlaylistVLC key—or whatever key you’re working with—and choose New > String Value. Name the new string value “Extended.”
You probably noticed that some of the common Registry keys we listed at the top of this section have “shellex” (Shell Extension) in the name instead of just “shell”. You’ll need to handle those types of keys just a bit differently. As our example, we’ll head down to one of those keys we mentioned:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
The shellex items will be a little tougher to decipher, but you can usually figure out an item by the key name on the left. Here, we’re going to be working with the DropboxExt key inside the ContextMenuHandlers key.
When Dropbox is installed, it adds a “Move to Dropbox” command to the context menu. Because I’m more of a drag and dropper, I’ve never once used that command, and I’m going to get rid of it.
You can’t use the tricks with the LegacyDisable and Extended string values we described above with shellex items. You could still delete the whole DropboxExt key to remove it from the context menu (and be sure to back the key up if you do), but there is a simple way to disable it. Just select the key on the left and then double-click the (Default) value inside that key to open its properties window.
On the properties window, in the “Value data” box, just modify the value that’s already there by putting a few dashes in front of it (-----), being careful not to delete any of the existing value. That way, if you change your mind, you can just go back in and remove the dashes. When you’re done, click “OK.”
If you want to remove context menu items that you only see when you right-click specific types of files, you can do that, too. These items are stored elswhere than the common locations we’ve already looked at. To find them, you’ll need to first locate the file extension key by looking under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for that extension, which in turn will tell you the name of the key that you need to look for.
Just as an example, say you wanted to remove the menu item for opening an Excel document (XLSX) in Excel when you right-click on it. Why would you want to do this? Well, you probably wouldn’t, but it’s an easy example to look at here. Other applications may add different types of commands you don’t need.
You’d start by taking a look at the following Registry key for the XLSX extension:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xlsx
The data column for the (Default) shell key lets you know that the actual type of file is “Excel.Sheet.12.”
Now, you can browse to that extensions key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell
And now that you’ve located the correct shell key, you can use the same techniques we described in the previous section on “shell” items to delete, disable, or hide the item on the Extended context menu. Remember the LegacyDisable and Extended string values? Yep, those work here, too.