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

Anonymous
2021-12-06T15:53:47+00:00

Who did this and why do they do it (see picture below)? The File Explorer right-click menu has had the options: Cut, Copy, Paste, Rename, Delete listed (as words) in this menu FOREVER and now some genius decided that after all these years, Windows users are too dumb to read. The words were replaced with icons. THIS IS SO ANNOYING. THE MUSCLE MEMORY IN MY HANDS IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO RETRAIN AFTER YEARS OF THE MENU BEING THE SAME WAY. Now I have to stop and think about something that I've done instinctively for years. I can get to the ORIGINAL right-click menu by selecting "Show More Options," shown in the photo below, but WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO, THAT'S AN EXTRA STEP? If I am intelligent enough to boot up a computer, then certainly I can read the words: Cut, Copy, Paste, Rename and Delete. I don't need you to create icons to represent those functions. IF IT'S NOT BROKEN THEN DON'T TRY TO FIX IT. STOP DUMBING DOWN THE SOFTWARE AND MAKING THINGS HARDER PLEASE.

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-03-31T03:57:57+00:00

    It seems if it's not broke, Microsoft is determined to break it these days. Sad but true.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-05-06T01:29:38+00:00

    Thank you so much for this Fix you linked to for the Windows 11 Dumb Menus problem.

    Those dumbed down context menus were driving me CRAZY!

    Specifically I want to to be able to COPY files & Folders to OneDrive this way, but the dumb menu only allows you to MOVE files!

    Even the extended "Show more options" menu does not allow OneDrive Copy only Move! How annoying, even more so that to change this we have to crawl through regedit and make changes!

    (Yes you can copy then paste using the Dumb Icons at the top, but that requires more steps)

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-05-10T23:33:59+00:00

    I agree completely. However, the rest of the context menu isn't so bad. I really just want to replace the kiddy icons with words for the basics of "cut copy paste delete". Has anyone found a way to revert these back to words and leave the rest of the context menu intact?

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-05-25T11:35:58+00:00

    I couldn't agree more!

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-26T05:35:29+00:00

    No I dont think thats it. Those menus are still very much labeled with text on the mac.

    Microsofts design language is now very much flat and web inspired..

    This is just plain old bad design. Jakob Nielsen who's work on usebility with Sun in the 1990s pretty much wrote the bible on useability, and these "mystery meat" icons fail that principle hard. You have to know what the icons mean to use them and you cant find out what they mean because they arent labeled. And you cant even google them because how do you type an icon into the web search.

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