With Windows 10 gaining more market share over the next few years, you can be sure there will be plenty of ways to tweak or customize your registry! Many visual and internal changes can only be made through the registry.
In this article, I’ll show you 10 cool registry tricks that you can use to customize your Windows 10 installation. I’m sure there will be a lot more customizations in the future, so feel free to leave comments and let us know any good ones you find.
Obviously, before you start, make sure you back up Windows and your registry.
Customizable desktop context menu
<
One good way to hack the registry is to add your own shortcuts to the right-click desktop context menu. There are not many of them by default, but if you are often on the desktop, you can add links to your favorite programs.
First go to the following registry key:
Computer HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT Directory Background shell
Now you need to add two keys under the shell key. The first one should be the name you want to use for the shortcut and the second one will be called the command. Above, I created one called Notepad and then created a command under Notepad. Finally, double-click the default key in the right pane and change the value to notepad.exe for example.
Now when you right click on your desktop, you will see Notepad, and clicking on it will open Notepad! Excellent!
Desktop icon spacing
Thanks to Microsoft for getting rid of the options to customize our desktop! What used to be so easy is now a registry hack! To change the spacing between desktop icons (horizontal and vertical), you need to edit two values ??in the registry. Check out our previous post below.
Change the spacing between desktop icons in Windows 10
Click for the last active window
This is probably one of my favorite little tricks for Windows 10. Have you ever had multiple windows of the same application, such as Word or Excel, open and then had to switch to another application, such as Chrome?
However, when you click the icon in the taskbar to return to Word or Excel, instead of going directly to the window you were in before, it just shows you a small thumbnail of all windows. With this hack, when you click the icon of a program with multiple instances open, you will be taken directly to the last active window.
Of course, you can just press the ALT + TAB key combination, but this is useful if you always end up using the mouse and not the keyboard. Navigate to the next key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer Advanced
Create a new 32-bit doubleword named LastActiveClick and set it to 1.
UAC is disabled
User Account Control is a completely different thing in Windows 10, and you can’t even turn it off completely through the traditional GUI you see above. To actually disable it, you need to go to the registry or edit your local security policy. However, there are some unexpected consequences of disabling UAC in Windows 10, which you can read in full below.
Explained OTT – UAC (User Account Control) in Windows 10
File delete confirmation dialog
Another missing feature in Windows 10 is the file delete confirmation dialog, which we are all so familiar with. I never noticed this too often, but when I first deleted the file on Windows 10, I was shocked to see that the file just ended up right in the trash. I’m sure I’ll get used to it over time, but if you really want it back, here’s how to get it back. Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Policies
Go ahead and create a new key in the Policies section called Explorer. Then create a new DWORD value and name it ConfirmFileDelete. Change the value to 1 if you need the delete file dialog and 0 if you don’t. Nicely!
Registered owner
Even though it’s so old and useless, I still love being able to change the registered owner on Windows to whatever I like. Don’t ask me why, this is just a weird thing for computer geeks from the early days of Windows. Fortunately, Microsoft still has a value stored in a registry key that you can change to whatever you want.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows NT CurrentVersion
In CurrentVersion, just find RegisteredOwner and change it. Also note that there is RegisteredOrganization, you can put two custom strings in the windows dialog. How do you get into this dialog in Windows 10? Click “Start” and type winver.
Painter desktop version
If you run multiple copies of Windows 10 on multiple computers and virtual machines like me, it’s a good idea to have the Windows version automatically appear on the desktop. Windows 10 has a registry key that lets you automatically add it to your desktop. Navigate to the next key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER Control Panel Desktop
Find PaintDesktopVersion under the Desktop key and change the value from 0 to 1. The next time you log in, you will see the Windows 10 version number and build number as shown above.
Border width
If you don’t like the size of the border around all windows on the desktop, you can change it by going to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER Control Panel Desktop WindowMetrics
Find a key called BorderWidth and change it to any value between 0 and 50. It defaults to -15, which is some kind of odd numbering scheme used by Microsoft that I don’t really understand. Luckily, you can just use 0-50 for this registry setting instead of crazy negative numbers.
Get Windows 7 Volume Control
If you are not a big fan of the new horizontal volume control in Windows 10, then you will be pleased to know that you can get the vertical volume control again like in Windows 7. Navigate to the next key: HKLM SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows NT CurrentVersion
Create a new key in the current version named MTCUVC and then create a new DWORD value inside MTCUVC named EnableMtcUvc. Leave the value 0.
Remove OneDrive from Explorer
Finally, if you’re not using OneDrive as your cloud storage, then what’s the point in keeping it visible in File Explorer all the time? Fortunately, there is an easy registry hack that can easily remove it from File Explorer.
Navigate to the following key:
Computer HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT CLSID {018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}
Change the System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree value to 0 and restart your computer. That’s all!
If you are using Windows 10 and feel comfortable changing the registry, experiment with the above options and customize Windows 10 to your liking. Enjoy!
–