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

Did you know your keyboard has a menu vital? On total-measurement keyboards, you’ll uncover it to the remaining of your suitable Ctrl critical. This critical opens context menus, but you can tweak it to make it extra handy.

Where’s the Menu Vital on Your Keyboard?

On complete-dimension keyboards, the menu important is positioned amongst the correct Home windows crucial and the correct Ctrl important to the proper of the Area bar. The menu key is also occasionally known as the “application crucial.”

Some smaller sized keyboards—for case in point, laptop computer keyboards—omit the menu critical to save room. Other scaled-down keyboards omit the suitable Windows critical and leave the menu key concerning the correct Alt and Ctrl keys.

Either way, if your keyboard has a menu crucial, it’ll be to the remaining of your suitable Ctrl vital. It doesn’t have the word “menu” printed on it—it has a minimal photo that looks like a menu. This picture is not standardized and will appear different on different keyboards. Sometimes it shows a compact pointer hovering earlier mentioned a menu and in some cases it looks like a stylized menu—a square or rectangle with some horizontal lines within it.

What’s the Menu Key For?

The menu vital opens a context menu for your present application. It is fundamentally like right-clicking on your variety in the software.

Attempt it—press the menu critical when viewing this world-wide-web web page and you’ll see your website browser’s context menu, just as if you had ideal-clicked on the webpage.

This is important is handy if you don’t have a mouse or really don’t have a mouse with a ideal mouse button. It performs in numerous diverse applications. If you pick a file or folder in File Explorer and push the menu important, you are going to see a context menu just as if you experienced suitable-clicked on the file.

This key will make it feasible to use the context menu with just the keyboard and with no a mouse. Press the menu crucial, use the arrow keys to find an possibility, and press Enter to activate it. Choose text or other components with keyboard shortcuts and press the menu crucial to activate context menu options—all with out your hands leaving the keyboard.

Microsoft is now chatting about changing this essential into an Business important to match the Windows critical. Most Computer system customers probably don’t contact this essential, which points out why Microsoft is floating the strategy of switching it. It’s a bit of a relic, like the Sys Rq, Scroll Lock, and Pause Break keys.

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

Change+F10 Can Purpose Like a Menu Vital, Too

If your keyboard doesn’t have a menu important, but you want to open up a context menu with a keyboard shortcut, in no way panic. You can press Shift+F10 in most apps to open up a context menu. It’s in essence the identical detail as the menu important.

This does not perform in each and every software, however—it depends on the purposes. If very little happens in the application you are working with, try Ctrl+Change+F10.

How to Remap the Menu Critical

The menu critical isn’t rather as aggravating as the Home windows key, which can get you out of game titles and other entire-display apps if you unintentionally press it. On the other hand, you may want to improve the actions of the menu vital and have it do anything far more practical. Immediately after all, that is prime keyboard true estate likely to waste if you’re not employing the crucial.

We like SharpKeys for immediately remapping a crucial to a further crucial. You can remap keys in the Windows Registry, but it’s substantially more difficult. SharpKeys delivers a handy graphical interface that customizes the fundamental registry values for you.

Following installing and launching SharpKeys, click the “Add” button to include a new remapping.

Pick “Special: Software (E0_5D)” in the left pane. You can also simply click “Type Key” and push the menu key—as we mentioned previously mentioned, it is often called the “application essential,” as it is here.

In the ideal pane, find whatsoever critical you want to remap the menu critical to. For case in point, you can pick out “Web: Back” and the crucial will perform as a back again important in your web browser and any other application that supports this critical.

When you’re completed, click on “OK.”

Click “Write to Registry” to write your modifications to the Windows Registry. You will now have to near the SharpKeys window and then possibly reboot your Computer system or signal out and sign again in. Your alterations will choose influence when you subsequent signal in.

If you want to modify what the key does or undo your changes, open up SharpKeys after once again, decide on your rule, and use the “Edit” or “Delete” button to modify or delete it. Generate your variations to the registry and then indication out and back again in all over again.

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

How to Customize the Menu Key Utilizing AutoHotkey

For far more highly developed customization, we endorse AutoHotkey. You can use AutoHotkey to generate a rapid little script that will pay attention for the menu vital and carry out other steps when you press it. In AutoHotkey, this vital is termed the “AppsKey.”

For instance, the following line in an AutoHotkey script will disable the menu vital (“AppsKey”) and result in it to do practically nothing (“Return”):

AppsKey::Return

This code in an AutoHotkey script will hear for the menu important and start Microsoft Word when you push it:

AppsKey::
Operate WINWORD
return

There’s a fantastic likelihood the menu essential will go away at some point. With keyboards however owning Scroll Lock keys, having said that, there is a very good possibility the menu critical will however be all-around for decades to arrive.

Associated: How to Create an AutoHotkey Script