Old menu bar appears in File Explorer in Windows 10 or 11

When you open File Explorer in Windows 10 or 11, the old menu bar containing the File, Edit, View, and Tools menu options may appear.

The menu bar may appear with a white background and doesn’t look good in dark mode. And there is no GUI option to hide the old menu bar. Previously there was a setting (“Always show menus”) in the Folder Options dialog, but it has been removed in the recent builds.

Resolution

To remove the old menu bar in File Explorer, follow these steps:

1. Launch Regedit.exe.
2. In the Registry Editor, go to the following key:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

3. Set the AlwaysShowMenus registry value data to 0.
4. If it’s missing, create the DWORD value manually.
5. Exit the Registry Editor.
6. Log off and log back in for the changes to take effect.

---

Alternatively, you can open a Command Prompt window and run the following command to accomplish the task.

reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced /v AlwaysShowMenus /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f

 
Log off and log back in for the changes to take effect.