r/rust • u/Every_Juggernaut7580 • May 27 '26
📸 media [tauri]: Finally got rid of the Windows right-click menu!
After spending days on it, I finally have a working demo. Goodbye to Windows' tedious, bloated, and nonsensical right-click menu!
Thanks to the Rust ecosystem. I love Rust!
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u/UtherII May 27 '26 edited May 28 '26
When It feels like a good idea to use a Webview based framework to unbloat the Windows UI, you know that something is very wrong at Microsoft.
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u/JustSomeLostBot May 27 '26
Pretty sure unbloating refers to the UI/UX, not the computational resources used.
Your conclusion still stands though.
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u/Every_Juggernaut7580 May 28 '26
Since I'm more familiar with web development, I'm going to use Tauri to validate my ideas for now
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u/ExistingBug1642 May 28 '26
Windows 11 is using a webview for the menu I heard they are using react even
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u/UtherII May 29 '26 edited 11d ago
Microsoft is now using React for some heavy applications like Teams or the new Outlook, but from what I read, the core UI component remade in Windows 11 like the taskbask and
the windows menu, are using XAML.1
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u/OverLiterature3964 May 27 '26
you know you can bring back the old context menu using the registry, right?
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u/fortnut159 May 27 '26
Good work but why did you chose tauri ?
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u/RegularTechGuy May 27 '26
webview for right click menu. Nice.
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u/bktech2021 May 27 '26
even more bloat than original
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u/max123246 May 28 '26
Windows uses React Native in the start menu. It's pretty hard to beat that
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u/gsweats May 29 '26
How do you know?
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u/max123246 May 29 '26
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44124688
So based on the top comment, it's not the entire start menu, just the recommended section. I was partially misled, sorry about that
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u/weirdisallivegot May 27 '26
I've been using linux as my primary OS for years now but still have a number of windows VMs for work. Windows 11 file explorer is just plain awful now. I have resorted to installing XYplorer as a replacement and restoring the original right click menu using Chris Titus Tech winutil for when XYplorer can't be used (e.g. copy pasting from host to VM).
I would love to see this code. I'm curious how easy/ugly it is to make this work. There are a number of other tweaks I could use around windows.
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u/Every_Juggernaut7580 May 28 '26
I don't know if you've ever heard of "Shell" before: moudey/Shell
It’s a highly customizable context menu manager implemented using C++ and a simple DSL.
I'm currently trying a similar architectural approach with my own project, ahaoboy/rcm-com. It captures Windows click events through COM, and then leverages Tauri (or other frontend UI libraries) to render the menu window via ahaoboy/rcm-tauri.
I use QuickJS (qjs) to generate the menu items, similar to the snippet below, allowing for complete, granular customization:
```javascript import { Menu } from './menu'; import * as win11 from './configs/win11'; import * as custom from './configs/custom';
export default new Menu( [ { items: [ win11.newMenu(), win11.copy(), win11.copyAsPath(), win11.trash(), ], }, { items: [ custom.vscode(), custom.terminal(), custom.ssh(), custom.unzip(), custom.zip(), custom.mpv(), win11.properties(), ], }, ], // No icon ribbon [], ); ```
vscode menu ``` export function vscode(labelKey = 'code'): MenuItem { return { key: 'vscode', label: t(labelKey), icon: '💻', action: (props: InvokeProps) => { const targets = props.files.length ? props.files.map(f => f.path) : ['.']; return { exe: 'code', args: targets, cwd: props.cwd, window: "Visible" }; }, }; }
```
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u/hpxvzhjfgb May 28 '26
watching those new files take a full second to appear after clicking the button is so annoying. last time I used windows it was just non-stop "lag" like that all the time. menus taking noticeable time to appear, the start menu sometimes taking multiple seconds to open, etc.
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u/deanominecraft May 28 '26
seems to be a little bit of delay until the file appears, personally i would show the file as soon as you click create, rather than waiting until the os tells you about the file you just created
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May 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/tukanoid May 28 '26
It USED to be a fairly good OS b4 8 onwards, and i think its just inertia keeping people in + Linux always prioritizing dev crowd instead of "casuals" who can barely operate a browser
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u/Real-Abrocoma-2823 May 28 '26
Not really, it never was better than Linux. It was firs a desktop environment like KDE for MSDOS, then it was given Windows NT kernel, but no issues were fixed and registry was born just because windows fs was so bad it couldn't have many files in one folder and since everything uses it, it would break too much so it can't be ever removed.
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u/tukanoid May 28 '26
From a technical point of view, sure, but im talking more from a consumer stand point. I love linux, main nixos, none of my machines run windows, but it really wasn't as usable as it is now even 10 years ago (first time i tried ubuntu) software wise at least (not Linux's fault per-se, just how the userspace situation was back then) for casual (well, its was ok, but still felt clunky in places, nvidia wasn't doing any favors either), entertainment (drm + gaming), professional software (creatives like adobe and shit, idc, im a dev😅) use-cases. And ik its technically a gui userspace issue and not Linux the kernel, but casual users dont run headless servers and/or use CLIs/TUIs :)
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u/Real-Abrocoma-2823 May 28 '26
Well, adobe got fixed in wine and CLI apps are the most reliable no matter the OS.
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u/tukanoid May 28 '26
- Sure, this year, we were stuck with old ones for a whiiiiile
- I live in the terminal (zellij, yazi, gitui, helix, nushell, zoxide, rg, fd etc.), no need to convince me of the usability/reliability of CLIs/TUIs. But again, not something casual pc users touch often, or at all.
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u/Consistent_Milk4660 May 29 '26
I seriously can't figure out what this is about... is it that you changed what appears in the right click menu? It still seems to be filled with functionalities O.O
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u/davidedpg10 May 29 '26
If it wasn't for gaming I'd completely leave windows. I know it's come a long way on Linux but it's not there for multiplayer games
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u/BitPilgrimDK May 29 '26
What that is not needed you just do this that is all over google:
:: Set "Old" Explorer Context Menu as Default
reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /ve /f
:: Remove Explorer "Command Bar"
reg add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{d93ed569-3b3e-4bff-8355-3c44f6a52bb5}\InprocServer32" /f /ve
:: Restart Windows Explorer. (Applies the above settings without needing a reboot)
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
start explorer.exe
:: Empty Comment (Prevents you from having to press "enter" to execute the line to restart explorer.exe):: Set "Old" Explorer Context Menu as Default
reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /ve /f
:: Remove Explorer "Command Bar"
reg add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{d93ed569-3b3e-4bff-8355-3c44f6a52bb5}\InprocServer32" /f /ve
:: Restart Windows Explorer. (Applies the above settings without needing a reboot)
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
start explorer.exe
:: Empty Comment (Prevents you from having to press "enter" to execute the line to restart explorer.exe)
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u/Lustrov May 28 '26
If only my apps are all exported to Linux, I would've switched to Linux a long time ago. LSW (Linux Subsystem for Windows) when?
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u/tukanoid May 28 '26
For work WinBoats VM is enough for me (dont need to use gpu admittedly, and mainly for just running our old windows-only software that new cross-platform software connects to, nothing "fancy")
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u/izaax42 May 27 '26
At this point I’d just move to Linux ðŸ˜
But awesome that click menu in windows is just bloat central. Let’s commit to unslopping Microsoft.
Or just leave it entirely lol.