How to bring back the old context menu in Windows 11


Windows 11 Classic Context Menu is a utility that allows any user of the latest system to bring back the classic Explorer context menu from Windows 10. The program does not require installation and is extremely easy to use.

To enable the familiar context menu, the user just needs to click on the button named “Enable Win11 Classic Context Menu Style” and agree to restart Explorer. After this, if you want to go back to the standard Windows 11 menu, you can press the button titled “Enable Win11 Default Context Menu Style”. In this case, no restart of Explorer will be required.

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Restoring the old context menu via the registry

Open the registry editor using the command regedit in the Run window and make your way to the following branch:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\<86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2>

  1. In the subsection with a long name within curly braces, you should also have a nested subsection InProcServer32. If it’s suddenly isn’t there, create it manually from the context menu. It may happen that the parent section is not there either; in this case, you should also create it manually so that the key takes the same form as in the screenshot.
  2. If the key exists, the right column will show two string parameters: ThreadingModel with the value Apartment and, by default, the value-path will lead to the file Windows.UI.FileExplorer.dll. Double click on the default parameter to open the edit window. Copy the value out to a file or export the edited key to a REG file, and then delete the value.
  3. If you get an access error when you try to change the parameter, replace the owner of the InProcServer32 subsection with the computer administrator and give the administrator (that is, yourself) full rights to the subsection.
  4. After applying the tweak, restart File Explorer or log back into the system.
  5. After these manipulations, the classic context menus will be restored in Explorer.

If you wish to bring back the new menu in Windows 11, you just have to restore the default setting of this parameter from the backup you made.