end2endzone / ShellAnything

ShellAnything is a C++ open-source software which allow one to easily customize and add new options to *Windows Explorer* context menu. Define specific actions when a user right-click on a file or a directory.
MIT License
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context-menu contextmenu explorer file-explorer menu-customization menu-personalize personalize shell-extension utf-8 windows windows-explorer windows-shell windows-shell-extension

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ShellAnything

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ShellAnything is a C++ open-source software which allow one to easily customize and add new options to Windows Explorer context menu. Define specific actions when a user right-click on a file or a directory.

Status

Build:

Service Build Tests
AppVeyor, Visual Studio 2019 Build status Tests status
Github Actions, Windows Server 2019 Build on Windows Tests on Windows

Statistics:

Statistics

Screenshots

Files context menu:

ShellAnything screenshot

Directories context menu:

ShellAnything screenshot

Purpose

Adding new options to Windows Explorer context menu can be done in many ways. One can create new context menus by manually editing the registry but this option is limited in support (static text, no submenus). If you are technical person, you can also follow this guide on StackOverflow.

With Shell Extension, you can dynamically create a context menu item (or submenu) that is more relevant to the selected file(s). Shell extension are dynamic by nature because they are runtime DLL inside Windows Explorer. They can show or hide options based on the selected file's name, size, content, etc. Shell extensions also have the ability to handle multiple selected files simultaneously.

On the downside, writing shell extensions is complicated, tedious and difficult to debug.

This is where ShellAnything is useful. It provides a simple xml-based way of adding new dynamic options to Windows Explorer context menu.

ShellAnything is implemented in C++ which, for writing Shell Extension, is a safe programming language compared to C#. See Writing Shell Extensions with C# for details.

Writing Shell Extensions with C#.

Writing Shell Extensions with C# is possible but highly discouraged and probably not a good idea.

Many articles already discussed the subject and they all comes to the same conslusion: Don't do it.

For instance, the following articles are good references:

Features

The main features of ShellAnything are:

For more details about ShellAnything features, please refer to the User Manual.

Usage

For instructions on how to use ShellAnything, please refer to the User Manual.

The User Manual also features Use Case with the following examples:

Build

Please refer to file INSTALL.md for details on how installing/building the application.

Platform

ShellAnything has been tested with the following platform:

NOTE: Version 0.6.1 is the last version of ShellAnything that supports 32-bit Windows.

NOTE: Version 0.7 is the last version of ShellAnything that supports Windows 7.

Versioning

This project use Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 for versioning. For the versions available, see the tags on this repository.

Authors

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details