March 28, 2024

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Super Technology

What Is the Menu Key For? (and How to Remap It)

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Menu key between Alt and Ctrl keys on a PC keyboard
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Did you know your keyboard has a menu critical? On total-measurement keyboards, you’ll discover it to the left of your appropriate Ctrl essential. This crucial opens context menus, but you can tweak it to make it extra beneficial.

Where’s the Menu Critical on Your Keyboard?

Position of the menu key highlighted on a physical keyboard
ojovago/Shutterstock.com

On entire-dimensions keyboards, the menu critical is found among the proper Home windows vital and the appropriate Ctrl important to the correct of the House bar. The menu crucial is also occasionally named the “application essential.”

Some lesser keyboards—for example, laptop keyboards—omit the menu crucial to help you save house. Other smaller keyboards omit the right Windows key and depart the menu essential concerning the proper Alt and Ctrl keys.

Either way, if your keyboard has a menu important, it’ll be to the left of your right Ctrl essential. It doesn’t have the word “menu” printed on it—it has a minor image that looks like a menu. This photo is not standardized and will search diverse on unique keyboards. Occasionally it shows a smaller pointer hovering above a menu and occasionally it appears to be like a stylized menu—a square or rectangle with some horizontal strains inside of it.

What is the Menu Crucial For?

The menu essential opens a context menu for your existing software. It is fundamentally like correct-clicking on your selection in the software.

Attempt it—press the menu vital though viewing this world wide web webpage and you are going to see your website browser’s context menu, just as if you experienced correct-clicked on the site.

This is critical is helpful if you do not have a mouse or never have a mouse with a proper mouse button. It is effective in lots of unique purposes. If you decide on a file or folder in File Explorer and press the menu crucial, you’ll see a context menu just as if you had suitable-clicked on the file.

Context menu open in File Explorer

This essential tends to make it doable to use the context menu with just the keyboard and with no a mouse. Press the menu essential, use the arrow keys to pick out an alternative, and push Enter to activate it. Find text or other elements with keyboard shortcuts and press the menu key to activate context menu options—all without having your palms leaving the keyboard.

Microsoft is now chatting about changing this crucial into an Office critical to match the Home windows crucial. Most Computer consumers probably really do not touch this essential, which clarifies why Microsoft is floating the notion of shifting it. It is a little bit of a relic, like the Sys Rq, Scroll Lock, and Pause Crack keys.

Associated: What Are the Sys Rq, Scroll Lock, and Pause Split Keys on My Keyboard?

Shift+F10 Can Functionality Like a Menu Important, Much too

Shift and F10 keys highlighted on a PC keyboard
ojovago/Shutterstock.com

If your keyboard doesn’t have a menu essential, but you want to open a context menu with a keyboard shortcut, never ever fear. You can press Shift+F10 in most purposes to open a context menu. It is essentially the very same detail as the menu vital.

This doesn’t do the job in each and every software, however—it is dependent on the purposes. If almost nothing happens in the software you’re working with, try Ctrl+Shift+F10.

How to Remap the Menu Critical

The menu important is not quite as irritating as the Home windows critical, which can get you out of games and other total-monitor purposes if you unintentionally press it. Even so, you may want to modify the conduct of the menu key and have it do some thing much more practical. After all, that’s prime keyboard genuine estate likely to squander if you’re not utilizing the crucial.

We like SharpKeys for promptly remapping a crucial to another critical. You can remap keys in the Windows Registry, but it’s a lot additional sophisticated. SharpKeys presents a practical graphical interface that customizes the fundamental registry values for you.

After putting in and launching SharpKeys, simply click the “Add” button to insert a new remapping.

SharpKeys window showing Add button

Pick out “Special: Software (E0_5D)” in the left pane. You can also simply click “Type Key” and push the menu key—as we outlined higher than, it’s often referred to as the “application critical,” as it is listed here.

In the suitable pane, choose no matter what critical you want to remap the menu key to. For case in point, you can choose “Web: Back” and the key will perform as a back again crucial in your web browser and any other application that supports this essential.

When you’re completed, click on “OK.”

Remapping the menu key in SharpKeys

Click on “Write to Registry” to create your alterations to the Home windows Registry. You’ll now have to shut the SharpKeys window and then both reboot your Laptop or indicator out and indicator back again in. Your changes will take outcome when you upcoming indication in.

If you want to improve what the important does or undo your improvements, open SharpKeys after again, pick out your rule, and use the “Edit” or “Delete” button to modify or delete it. Publish your alterations to the registry and then signal out and back again in all over again.

Write to Registry button in SharpKeys

You can use SharpKeys to reassign other keys, too—for example, you can make the Caps Lock or Home windows crucial perform as other keys.

How to Customize the Menu Critical Applying AutoHotkey

For more innovative customization, we recommend AutoHotkey. You can use AutoHotkey to write a fast very little script that will hear for the menu vital and execute other steps when you push it. In AutoHotkey, this vital is referred to as the “AppsKey.”

For case in point, the next line in an AutoHotkey script will disable the menu key (“AppsKey”) and trigger it to do almost nothing (“Return”):

AppsKey::Return

This code in an AutoHotkey script will pay attention for the menu important and launch Microsoft Phrase when you press it:

AppsKey::
Run WINWORD
return

Making the menu key launch Word with an AutoHotkey script

There’s a excellent probability the menu critical will go away at some stage. With keyboards nonetheless possessing Scroll Lock keys, however, there’s a fantastic chance the menu vital will however be about for a long time to occur.

Similar: How to Generate an AutoHotkey Script



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