Microsoft is finally fixing one of the most annoying things in Windows: the menu
Microsoft has admitted that the Windows 11 context menu has become cluttered and slow. The company is rolling out a major update focused on performance improvements and full user customization of the menu items.
Anyone who has used Windows 11 is familiar with this frustration: you right-click to perform a simple action on a file, and you get a half-baked and slow menu that is missing many options. To get to what you really need, you have to click on "Show more options," and only then do you get the full, legacy menu. This has been one of the most common user experience complaints since the system's launch, and it seems the giant from Redmond is finally listening.
Microsoft admits the menu is "cluttered and slow"
In an official post, Microsoft admits that the context menu—the one that appears upon right-clicking in File Explorer—has become "cluttered and slow." Consequently, the company is announcing a massive set of improvements intended to solve this problem.
The update focuses on two main areas: performance and customization. Regarding performance, Microsoft promises it has rewritten significant parts of the operating system's code so that the menu opens smoothly and immediately, without the familiar "lag" that sometimes freezes File Explorer when trying to extract a ZIP file. Following this update, the menu will be much leaner and faster.
Full menu management
The real news is the new customization capability. Until now, every application installed (yes, we are looking at you, WinRAR and Adobe) felt comfortable pushing itself into the right-click menu. The result was total chaos with too many options. The new update brings a feature users have demanded for years: full management of the menu. We will be able to choose exactly which applications and shortcuts appear in the quick menu and which remain out.
Want only "Copy," "Paste," and "Compress files"? You will get it. Want to remove shortcuts for apps you barely open? You can do so with pleasure. Don't use "Create shortcut" or "Send to"? You can remove them.
In the first stage, the update is arriving for Windows Insiders (in the Dev or Canary channels). Only after ensuring no critical bugs are discovered will it be released to the general public in one of the next major operating system updates.
