How to Get Back Classic (Full) Context Menu in Windows 11

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In Windows 11, the context menu appears very quickly, but the menu doesn’t show all the entries by default. To access the menu entries that are not shown in the default listing, you need to click the “Show more options” option every time.

As an alternative, to launch the classic context menu directly, you can also press and hold the Shift key when right-clicking on an item. Or use the keyboard shortcut: Shift+F10.

restore full classic context menu

The Windows 11 default context menu may be slightly inconvenient for those who have been using Windows Operating Systems for a long time. This article explains how to make Windows 11 show the full classic context menu (by default, without having to press Shift) so that all the entries are displayed.

RELATED: Get Back Windows 10 Ribbon UI in Windows 11 File Explorer

Restore Classic (Full) Context Menu in Windows 11

To restore the full/classic context menu in Windows 11, follow these steps:

  1. Open a Command Prompt window.
  2. Type the following command line and press Enter: 
    reg add HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32 /ve /d "" /f
  3. Exit the Command Prompt window.
  4. Log off and login back in, or restart Explorer (via Task Manager) for the change to take effect.

INFO: The above command-line creates the following registry key (per-user override) and sets an empty string as the data for the (default) value:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32

When you right-click an item, you’ll see the full/classic context menu instead of the default condensed menu. The “Show more options” entry is removed.

restore full classic context menu

[Undo Information] Restore the Default Windows 11 Context menu

To restore the default Windows 11 context menu, all you need to do is delete the above registry key. It can be done via the Registry Editor (regedit.exe).

Alternately, you can use the following command from a Command Prompt window:

reg delete HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2} /f

I hope that helps!

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Ramesh Srinivasan is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a consecutive ten-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in the Windows Shell/Desktop Experience category, from 2003 to 2012. He loves to troubleshoot and write about Windows. Ramesh founded Winhelponline.com in 2005.

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2 thoughts on “How to Get Back Classic (Full) Context Menu in Windows 11”

  1. Incorrect path, \CLSID\ missing -> HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32
    Also easier to kill/restart explorer.exe from the command line since we already are in cmd : taskkill /im explorer.exe /f & explorer.exe

    Reply

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