Add better right-click options to Windows
What you need: Ultimate Windows Tweaker; Windows 10 Time required: 20 minutes
Right-clicking a file, folder or your Windows desktop reveals a list of handy options (called the context menu), which lets you pin programs to your Start menu, open files using specific programs and more. But why stop there?
Here, we reveal how Ultimate Windows Tweaker (UWT) provides a vast array of new options you can add to your right-click menu, and also lets you remove some of the default Windows options you never use.
STEP Download UWT from www.snipca.com/35233. Avoid 1 the fake Download buttons (these are just adverts) and instead scroll down towards the bottom of the page and click the black Download Ultimate Windows Tweaker button 1 . Open the ZIP file, extract the files to a folder on your PC, then open this folder. If you want to have quick-access to the tool, right-click the EXE file 2 , select ‘Send to’, then ‘Desktop (create shortcut)’ 3 . A shortcut icon will now appear on your desktop 4 . Double-click this to run UWT.
STEP Before making changes, click Create Restore Point 1 to 2 create a system restore point (letting you quickly reverse all changes if necessary). Select ‘Context Menu’ on the left 2 . You’ll see a list of Windows apps, which can be added to your right-click menu by ticking the relevant boxes. Using the box to the right of each, you can choose whether they sit in the top, middle or bottom section of the menu. Here, we’ve added entries for Microsoft Edge and Windows’ Settings app 3 to the bottom section. To save your changes, click Apply Tweaks 4 . Your taskbar will temporarily disappear as Windows Explorer restarts. Right-click an empty section of your desktop and you’ll see the new options 5 .
STEP UWT can add much more than Windows 3 tools to your right-click menu. Select the Desktop Context Menu tab 1 to view them. As in Step 2, you can add or remove items by ticking the relevant box and choosing which section of the right-click menu it sits in. We’re adding Paint 2 (Microsoft’s impressively simple image editor), Create Restore Point 3 (a handy shortcut for System Restore) and Snipping Tool 4 (one of the screenshot tools built into Windows).
STEP The Desktop Context Menu 2 tab 1 contains additional 4 shortcut options. In the top section, you can choose to add shortcuts to Windows Defender (Microsoft’s antivirus tool), which is great for running an impromptu virus scan 2 . Any of the options you select here will be added to a Windows Defender sub-menu – here we’ve opted for the Quick Scan and Full Scan options 3 . In the section below this, you can add options to open a Command Prompt window in a specific folder, as well as handy ‘Move to’ and ‘Copy to’ commands for files 4 .
STEP This latest version of UWT adds a Drives option, which 5 lets you open any of your hard drives in File Explorer. Select the relevant drive, then click the Add button (unlike with other settings, you don’t need to click Apply Tweaks to confirm changes to this option). You can also use it to create a shortcut for your USB sticks. First, make sure you have a USB stick inserted (if not, close UWT, insert the stick, then reopen UWT). Your USB stick should now be listed in the ‘drive box’ dropdown menu of drive box 1 . Select it, then click Add 2 . Now, whenever you have a USB stick inserted, you can open it in File Explorer by right-clicking the desktop and selecting the new drive’s shortcut 3 .
In the Settings section of the Desktop Context Menu 2 STEP 6 tab, you can add shortcuts to some of the most useful tools in the Settings app. For example, adding the ‘Network & Internet’ 1 option lets you quickly fix Wi-fi problems, while Devices 2 directs you to the Settings page for turning on/off Bluetooth devices and adding/removing printers. As with the Windows Defender options in Step 4, any options you select will be added to a sub-menu of your context menu – this time called Settings 3 .
STEP You can also keep things tidy by removing some of the 7 Windows default options you don’t use. Select the Other Context Menus tab 1 , then look in the Remove Defaults section at the top. Any option you tick here will be removed from the right-click menu (as before, you can restore them by removing the tick). We’ve removed all but the Restore Previous Versions option 2 (see our feature on page 62 for more on restoring file versions). In the section below this, you can change which options appear when selecting New from the right-click menu. We’ve chosen to remove two that were selected by default (‘Rich text format’ and ‘Bitmap image’ 3 ) and add the ‘Compressed (zipped) folder’ option 4 , which lets you quickly create a new ZIP archive.