When I had to use Windows 11 for a month because you people paid me to do so, the one seemingly small thing that really ground my gears were Windows 11’s terrible right-click (context) menus. They were full of stuff I didn’t put there, slow to open, and in some places, a modern Windows 11 context menu would have its own old Win32 context menu with even more stuff. It seems Microsoft is finally going to fix all of this.
This new compact menu will be much faster and more reliable, as it foregoes needing to load in all the third-party actions that slow it down currently. Additionally, at the Windows Insider Meetup in London, Microsoft showed me a new context menu customization feature coming soon that will let users configure what apps and actions appear in the right-click menu.
↫ Zac Bowden at Windows Central
Look, I know to us non-Windows users this seem like an incredibly small and dumb thing to focus on, but when your operating system is as much of a trashfire as Windows has become, improved context menus are massive improvements that make a meaningful difference. Of course, Microsoft makes these types of promises all the time, so I’ll believe it when I see it.
https://winutil.christitus.com/
It’s just a powershell script. #1 powershell project on github
Has windows debloat scripts
Tweaks to do things like return the original context menu
Read your windows challenge details. No debloat scripts. You must hate yourself.
How can modern os components like context menus be slow in 2026?
“Security” ? “AI” ?
Even if it has been written in GW basic, it would be fast af.
Measure productivity in lines of code and mandate use of “ai” tools.
FlyingBoats,
Ugh, I don’t like bloat, but I think you solved step 2…
South Park Underpants Scheme…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ih_TQWqCA
Honestly? With the computers being as fast as they are now, there’s no reason why even a good amount of extensions wouldn’t load almost instantly. Something else is off…
Even task manager is super slow. There’s a perceivable lag in everything you do. When you run something like Haiku, or heck, even KDE, it lags way less.
Main problem is that Microsoft itaelf is a company focused on adding features and neglects the most basic cleaning up in their user interfaces. Kind of a Diogenes syndrome for their UI. Crap just accumulates to never be removed. They redo the settings but keep the old config panels. I guess it is a mix of half-assed work (things missing in the new GUI) and fear to drop some “feature” not important enough to get a place in the new UI, but they are afraid to drop completely.
What pisses me off the most is that they’ve been doing this UI transition for 10+ years. If they would have dedicated ONE person full time to this effort, they would be DONE. Else, you must just publish the new guidelines internally so no new features violate them. Done.
That last sentence, 100%. Look forward to “We heard you, the context menus were slow because they loaded addons. So we fixed it! Now, the context menu has been replaced with Copilot, which doesn’t have to load because it’s now started before winlogon!”
In 2026, the biggest brightest feature you can hope for in Windows, is improved context menus!
I’m glad to hear Microsoft is addressing the context menu issues in Windows 11. It’s a small but significant part of the user experience, and improvements there could make a big difference.https://scritchyscratchy.cc