When Windows 8 killed the Start menu, temporarily, almost nobody liked it, except me. Microsoft tried to remedy the problem to an extent by introducing an alternative called Power User or Win+X menu. You might as well call it the secondary Start menu since Microsoft hasn’t given an official name to it. It can be accessed by right-clicking the bottom-left corner of the taskbar, or the Start button when it was re-introduced. It’s called the Win+X menu because you can access it using the mentioned key combination.
The Power user menu has survived and made its way onto Windows 10 and I think that’s great. But what’s not great is that you can’t customize it, at least not without a third-party tool. This is where the aptly named Win+X Menu Editor comes in.
The default list could’ve been one of the nice ways to access your favorite stuff on your PC had Microsoft allowed users to edit this list. Luckily Sergey Tkachenko, the developer of Win+X Menu Editor, was thinking the same thing. It was created using hashlnk (created by Rafael Rivera) tool source code. By default, this menu contains three groups with administrative tools such as Task Manager, Disk Management, Control Panel, and others. Moreover, you can also customize the Windows 10 Start Menu as well.
Download WinX Menu Editor
How to Edit Win+X Menu with Win+X Menu Editor
- Download the tool from the download link above. You’ll get a small file named WinXMenuEditorRelease.zip.
- If you don’t have an archive program like WinRar installed, you can double-click to open the file using Windows Explorer. If you have archive software installed, you can open it using the installed program or right-click the file and extract the contents.
- Regardless of your choice above, you should have four files, one of which will be WinXEditor.exe.Â
- Double-click WinXEditor.exe or right-click it and select Open.Â
- To add a new item to the Win+X Menu, click Add a program in the top left. This brings out a menu containing the following itemsÂ
- Add a program – use this to add any installed program from your computer.
- Add preset > Shutdown options, Services, Paint, Calculator, Windows Media Player, Snipping Tool, and Notepad.
- Add a Control Panel item – use this to add any Control Panel item to the WinX menu.
- Add an Administrative Tools item – use this to add administrative tools from Windows.
- You can add whatever you want but don’t forget the menu already has a lot of items. You probably wouldn’t want it cluttered with all the programs you could just as easily have placed on the start menu. Consider this as a quick menu with only your most needed programs and folders.
- This is why you might also want to remove some of the pre-included items that you don’t use. To remove an item from the list, select and hit Delete on your keyboard. Alternatively, you can right-click on it and select Remove. Right-clicking on a menu item gives you further options to Move the list item up or down the list, Rename it, or Move to group (another group).Â
- When you’re ready to apply the changes you’ve made, click the Restart Explorer button at the bottom.Â
Win+X Menu Editor does not warn you when you remove an item, it only warns you when you remove an entire group. So be careful while you go on removing stuff from the menu. If you ever were to remove things you did not intend to, you can manually add them back using the steps above. There’s always the Restore defaults button in the top-right when you need it. Note that Win+X Menu Editor does not entirely remove programs or files from your PC. It simply removes the entries from the Win+X Menu.
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