Windows 11 File Explorer Right-click Menu was changed to include icons

What version are you running?

So they came up with a solution that works and one that I'm very excited about which is what we see. We have a small bar of icons at the top for these file level operations which will ALWAYS be in the same position at the top but only takes up a single line of space!

I've only had Windows 11 for a few weeks, I'm not thrilled about the icons vs the old menu, but I know things change and I'm trying to adapt, generally it'll work for me as I retrain myself. However, my primary issue is - the icons are NOT always in the same position and this is driving me a little bonkers. (Additionally, sometimes the icons are at the top of the right click window, sometimes at the bottom, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to that.)

In addition to Cut, Copy, or Paste, I do a lot of Renaming of files and folders. My brain has already started to learn that "Rename" is the 3rd icon - except sometimes Paste is the 3rd icon and Rename is the 4th icon, for no apparent reason. Which means that about half the time, I find myself accidentally copying files or folders when I wanted to Rename something. Right now I have two folders open, in one of them when I right click, Rename is 3rd, in the other folder Rename is 4th. I have not cut or copied anything in either folder.

I'll give it a few more weeks to see if I can get past this initial annoyance, if not I'll have to find out if our IT department is willing to edit the registry.

Count me in as one of those users who actually appreciates it and doesn't have an issue with positive change. I think it was a stroke of GENIUS, but for the naysayers, let me explain why....

You have to go back to WIN95 to truly understand the issue. The goal was to make it easy to cut, copy, and paste. In Win95 it looked like this:

More continued to be added - for convenience of course - and XP looked like this:

Note how they continue to move down the list. This still wasn't so bad. But by Win10, it became impossible to prioritize over all of the items that get added by default by various software vendors. Forcing it to be ALWAYS at the top would have left millions of users griping about the change - particularly admins of small companies. It would have moved to the top, appearing ahead of open, search, explore, extract, open with, sent to, etc in the above example while separating it from other file level operations like create shortcut, delete, rename, etc. Alternatively it would have been left bouncing around to various different places which also would have been a mess. They would have essentially had to toy with the inner workings of Windows to give it a separate priority level which would create a confusing location for it that changed frequently based on what you were doing and likely would have opened a whole new mess of problems.

So with WIN10, it created right-click menus that looked like mine.

I had to right click, move the mouse to the bottom, then repeatedly click the down arrows 8 times to get to cut/copy/paste.

In retrospect, when it was initially designed it would have been great to have a settings option where one could manually re-order each menu type but the complexity at the time would have slowed Windows down for something that was not really needed at the time. Making such a change now would create so much redesign work at the base level that it would likely cause far too many side-effects which would take years to work through.

So they came up with a solution that works and one that I'm very excited about which is what we see. We have a small bar of icons at the top for these file level operations which will ALWAYS be in the same position at the top but only takes up a single line of space! I've been around and involved in Alpha and Beta testing with Windows long enough that I can really appreciate the thought that went into this. Granted, what they should have done was left the text options for it as well but then I'm sure there would be a lot of complaining about redundancy lol.

So I'm excited about it. I no longer have to deal with that right-click menu above, and I don't have to go through any complex hoops to force it to be easier to use. I don't have to trade off pushing a bunch of other stuff to the bottom and having to scroll for it either. For me, making the change from right-click/move the mouse down until I get to cut/copy/paste to right click, move up a bit to the right took a bit to get used to but after a few days it drastically improved the efficiency of my work and that's exactly the kind of changes I've been hoping for in Win11.

But as they often do, they left the means for those who don't want to adopt it a method of restoring the previous method by editing the registry. It's a much simpler edit to put it back than it is to move those functions elsewhere manually. I'm hoping they'll act on a separate suggestion that I and many others have been pushing for which is a "Power Menu" or PowerToy for advanced users that makes it easier to make changes to the most common registry edits like this without actually having to access the registry directly. Back in the day, the registry was that place where only the brave and experienced admins would go. But over the years it's become a customization place to fix minor annoyances for many who shouldn't be toying with things at the registry level where one wrong move can brick your system. So rather than gripe about the change, I urge anyone who wants to "put it back" to instead push for a separate PowerMenu that makes it easy to make changes to such things without having to resort to directly accessing the registry.

AMEN! My brain instantly knows what those words mean. Now I have to pause and think about what this tiny picture is supposed to represent but then I realize I can mouse over them to get the words to pop up so I am not guessing on these hieroglyphics. I am sure by the time we get used to reading like a kindergartener, Microsoft will change the pictures because they can't seem to leave anything the hll alone!

Stuff like this just equals loss of productivity. Loss of productivity means customers have another reason to not upgrade until they are forced to.

And one more thing, stop taking away tools and settings or making them difficult to find, such as the quick launch bar. I hate pinned icons. I open a lot of windows at once and never am sure if it is an open window or a pinned icon. If I click it to find out, well then it is open. Tiny icons in the quick launch bar solve this. Plus, I shouldn't have to give a reason why I like it. Quit giving and then taking away!

Totally absurd that they removed the text options in the pop-up menus for these common functions (copy, paste, etc.). Definitely takes me a few seconds to figure out which icon is the one that I want. Never understand why software companies seem to just change things for the sake of changing things...like the developers have to justify their existence on the payroll...so they implement changes just because.

Can't tell you how many times I've given other computer users step-by-step instructions that include copying and pasting files. I'd say, "right-click the file, then click Copy". Now, I've got to explain what the Copy icon looks like to them. Just dumb.

Bring back the text, Microsoft. Come on, man. :-)