The right-click menu on a Windows system always contains many additional options that can be performed when opening the menu at a specific path or when selecting a specific file or folder. Without this menu, we may have to navigate through many different menus to access the options that have been grouped into that menu, allowing us to execute operations quickly. One of the most important options in the right-click menu is the “Open With” option, which allows the user to open a specific file using a specific program as long as the program supports that file.
Without this option, the natural course of action would be to open the program first and then open the file through it or drag and drop the file into the program window. This is why the “Open With” option saves a lot of time and effort. Unfortunately, adding a specific program to the “Open With” menu depends on how the program is programmed. Some programs may not allow this, and there is no direct option within Windows to control the items in the right-click menu. That’s why we will explain in today’s article how to add the “Open With” option for any program of your choice to the right-click menu so you can quickly open files that the program supports.
Fortunately, there are many tools available that allow you to edit the right-click menu on Windows, whether by adding items to the menu or by cleaning up the right-click menu from items and programs that are not used frequently and are not needed. Today, we will add the program you want to the menu using the “Open with plus plus” tool, a completely free tool developed by a member of the popular GitHub website and affiliated with Microsoft, which always offers open-source programs and tools for various purposes.
How to add the “Open With” option for any program you want to the right-click menu
First, you need to download the “Open with plus plus” tool which is a compressed file in “7z” format. Then extract the file using a decompression program, and then run the tool through its “exe” file. The tool is portable and does not require installation, and you will find that it is very simple and does not have many options. Before starting to edit and add the program you want, you must first install the tool’s files in the system by clicking on the “Install” tab at the top and then clicking Ok to install it immediately.
Now, go to the “Add” tab, where you will add the “Open With” option for any program you want to the right-click menu by selecting some settings. The first setting is the “Name” option, which is the name that will appear in the right-click menu. You can choose any name you want, just make sure to select a descriptive name that allows you to identify the correct option when adding multiple programs to the menu. For example, in this case, we named the option “Open with Chrome” to open the file using the Google Chrome browser.
The second step is to add the file extension you want to link to the program. For example, in this case, we want to open “PDF” files using the Chrome browser, so we will write the extension “PDF” in the “File Types” field. Of course, you can add more than one extension or click on the “All Files” option next to the field, or write an asterisk “*” inside the field, and the option to open with the selected program will be shown when clicking on any file regardless of its extension. However, the selected program must support the file extension, so make sure to add a specific extension.
Then, add the path of the program you want to open the file through in the “Path” field. If you don’t know how to access the program’s path, right-click on the program shortcut on the desktop, then select “Properties,” and copy the path from the “Target” field without quotation marks. Then paste the path into the “Path” field in the “Open with plus plus” tool.
Before ending, you can also select some additional settings at the bottom to adjust as you like. For example, you can select the “show in submenu” option, which will add all the programs you add to the right-click menu inside one menu with the tool’s name for more organization and formatting. You can also select the “Show in directories” option to display the option when clicking on any file in another path, not just on the desktop. You can also select the “Run as admin” option to run the selected program automatically with administrative privileges if the program requires it.
After selecting the options you want, click OK at the bottom, then right-click on any file with the extension we specified in the previous steps, and you will immediately see the new option. You can, of course, repeat the same steps multiple times and add more than one program and link them to any specific extension you want.
How to delete the “Open With” option for programs added to the right-click menu
If you want to remove any program you have added to the right-click menu, you can do so by going to the “Remove” tab on the tool interface. You will find a list of all the programs you have added through the tool in the sidebar to the left. Select the program from the list that you want to remove, then click ok at the bottom, and the selected program option will be removed from the right-click menu immediately.
