Windows 11 has entirely refreshed the right-click context menu in Windows 11 and has add a completely new menu style. While this new redesign has removed some unnecessary shortcuts and options, the new look can be a bit daunting at first.

Thankfully, it can be easily customized to suit your needs.

There are two ways to go about it. You can either revert to the old Windows 10 style context menu and add your favorite app list. Or, you can add the new apps directly in Windows 11.

Either way, you can add and remove apps to context menu in Windows 11 as per your preference.

How to change and customize the right-click context menu in Windows 11

Here’s how to do it, use the tweak app “Custom Context Menu”, the app can be found in the Microsoft Store, search for “custom context menu”.

after you have installed the app offered by touchwp, open it and click Add Menu or choose + to create a new context menu item in Windows 11.

As the developer of the app describes, the app is unlimited free trial, but I think it’s definitely worth a dollar.

Enter the App you want to add to context menu in Windows 11.

Restart the computer and that’s it.

And this is what the new Item looks like in the Windows 11 file explorer context menu.

According to Microsoft, what was previously called Windows Explorer is now called File Explorer in Windows 11.

Back to classic context menu in Windows 11

The “Show more options” option can be annoying. For example, I have to click multiple times to send a file to my mobile device. And when this happens a dozen times a day, it can get annoying.

There are a ways to bring back the old classic Windows 10 context menu. You can either edit the Registry Editor entries. Or the easy way, you can tweak the Registry keys directly via Command Prompt.

Open Command Prompt by hit the + R keys and typing cmd and paste the following command:

REG ADD "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /ve /t REG_SZ /d "" /f

This simple action will add the keys in the correct sequence.

Restart the computer and enjoy the success!

The Windows Registry Editor is the hub of all Windows settings. And if you know the right key and value, you can customize some parts of your Windows system as per your preference.

Note. the “Custom Context Menu” app from touchwp under Windows 11 use a different approach for deployment, the JSON file created in this way is stored under these path:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\7061touchwp.CustomContextMenu_m9vp3t2f55f5t\LocalState\custom_commands

However, editing in the Registry Editor is not a simple game, and playing with the wrong key and value may ruin your computer.

Conclusion

That’s how you can customize and add items in the right-click context menu in Windows 11 file explorer. The default context menu looks fine but restrictive. It takes time in getting used to. You can customize it and put the frequently used apps and options over there.

Generate MD5 hash on your own computer

You should not generate MD5 hashes with online hash generators, as there is no guarantee that they will not end up in rainbow tables.

Message-Digest Algorithm 5 (MD5) is a widely used cryptographic hash function. It generates MD5 hashes with a length of 128 bits. The 128-bit MD5 hashes are typically written as a 32-digit hexadecimal number.

MD5 was developed in 1991 by Ronald L. Rivest at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the successor to MD4. It is known that MD5 does not offer any collision resistance and is therefore currently considered unsafe. Preimage resistance is also theoretically broken, but a preimage attack against MD5 is not practical.

Previously and often today, MD5 is often used to write passwords stored in databases as a hash. This prevents passwords from being saved in plain text, which would otherwise pose a high security risk.

User Authentication

During user authentication, the password they submit is hashed using MD5 and the MD5 hash is compared with the MD5 hash in the database. If both hashes are the same, the user is considered authenticated. It is important to use so-called salts in order to provide attackers with an effective remedy against so-called rainbow tables.

Generate MD5 hash with Notepad++

An additional feature in Notepad++ that can occasionally be helpful is the hash generator. With the MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256 and SHA-512 hash generator, a cryptographic hash is generated from a text input or a file.

Click Tools -> MD5 -> Generate to generate MD5 hashes.

Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement and can be downloaded here. The use runs in the MS Windows environment and is subject to the GNU General Public License.

Security with online hash generators

The MD5 hashes should not be generated online using generators on websites, as there is no guarantee that they will not ultimately end up in Rainbow Table. Rainbow tables are data structures that enable fast, memory-efficient searches for the original string for a given hash value.

Hash Rainbow Table

The term “Rainbow” refers to the different colors within the table that indicate different reduction functions and steps. When it comes to cracking a large number of passwords, rainbow tables ensure a significant reduction in complexity because there is a ready-made data set with password hashes. The passwords are compared with this data set. In this process, the hash files are – to put it simply – split into small parts and correlated with letters and words using calculations until the plain text password is determined.

Generate hash in Windows PowerShell

Under Windows, an MD5 hash can be generated in PowerShell by creating a corresponding function.

Function Get-MD5Hash {
    param
    (
        [String] $String
    )
    $Hash = New-Object System.Text.StringBuilder
    $([System.Security.Cryptography.HashAlgorithm]::Create('MD5')).ComputeHash([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($String)) | 
    ForEach-Object {
        $null = $Hash.Append($_.ToString("x2"))
    }
    return $Hash.ToString().ToLower()
}

The call in PowerShell now follows with these command.

PS C:\> Get-MD5Hash "NewPassword2"
c22625c6ea0e23bbf572849133bfd432

Generate MD5 hash under Linux

Under Linuxmd5sumis already onboard, so a hash can be generated with ran the following command in the terminal Ctrl + Alt + T

$ echo -n NewPassword2 | md5sum
c22625c6ea0e23bbf572849133bfd432

Generate MD5 hash in macOS

On macOS you can also run the command as follows in a terminal.

$ echo -n "NewPassword2" | md5
c22625c6ea0e23bbf572849133bfd432

The option -n does not output the trailing newline.