Windows 10: How do I remove entries from the "Open with" menu in Windows 10 File Explorer?

When I right-click a graphic in Windows 10 File Explorer, I have a ton of programs in the "Open with" context menu item that I want to get rid of, but no matter what I've tried, there appears to be no way to clear that sections' history of programs.


I have tried many context menu editing utilities including Nirsoft's but none of them has helped.


I have also tried editing the registry by removing entries from the relevant .jpg, .jpeg, .png, etc extensions in the "[COLOR=rgba42, 0, 170, 1]HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\OpenWithList\[/COLOR]" folder in the registry with Regedit but it made no difference to the "Open with" section I want to clear the history from when right-clicking any graphics file.


I have also tried resetting all of Windows 10 settings to default and that didn't help either.


Surely there "must" be an MRU folder somewhere in the registry that holds the entries listed, but no amount of searching for a solution has helped thus far. To illustrate the problem graphically, please see the snapshot provided below. Can someone please assist with how I can achieve what I need to do?


Thank you and will be hoping for some advice and a solution.


Regards, Andrew




:)

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

Pressing “Windows+Pause Break” (it’s up there next to scroll lock) opens the “System” Window.

Windows 10: In the new version of Windows, Explorer has a section called Quick Access. This includes your frequent folders and recent files. Explorer defaults to opening this page when you open a new window. If you’d rather open the usual This PC, with links to your drives and library folders, follow these steps:

• Open a new Explorer window.
• Click View in the ribbon.
• Click Options.
• Under General, next to “Open File Explorer to:” choose “This PC.”
• Click OK

credit to Lifehacker.

 

Remove "Other Options" entry from "Open With" program list

A biref search suggests:
Remove Programs from Open with Context Menu in Windows | Tutorials

- from the tutorials here

or

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/1811...u-in-explorer/

- with due caution

and there's this free tool (see option bottom left):

 

Can I customize the list of suggest apps in the "Open with" menu?

Well, I hope this helps the OP - it took a while. I tried 'Default Program Editor' (DPE) and it did indeed add (or remove) items, but when I tried to specifically add Word to pdf opening, it failed - it went through the motions, but nothing happened. So I started again, playing with settings for opening .doc files. This seemed to work: initially in explorer I had 3 programs appear in the 'default' list that pops up on a rt-click>open-with:



and this is what the relevant bit of the Registry showed:



Don't ask me why just 3 of those 8 (a to h) programs show up (maybe the 'instant' list is limited to three? - no, see later) - anyway, I used DPE to remove Wordpad from the list: when saving the edit as a REG file, this is what I got:

Code:

and the result in Explorer was:



and the registry now shows:



Note how item 'g' from the list has been removed (it seems there is no issue with having a letter missing). I then messed about trying to open a .doc file with various other programs, and they all started to appear in the 'instant' list:




So I thought 'well, that is easy - just open a pdf once in Word and it should appear'. So back to trying to open PDFs: but however many times I tried, Word would never appear.



even though there were any number of entries in the Registry 'Open With' list, including Word:



So what did DPE make of this - well, it showed some of the entries:



Although Word is shown, it doesn't appear on a rt-click. Its entry can be removed, but that doesn't help. So my attention was drawn to the existence of another folder below 'OpenWithList', namely 'OpenWithProgids', and that contained a specific ref to Sumatra (my preferred program for PDFs). Looking back at the same entry for .docx, I found this:



so I added an identical Word.Document.12 ref to the list for PDFs:



I think IrfanView is there as it got added during my experiments! I now get this in Explorer:


Hurrah! I then tried to use DPE to remove the redundant entries, and got this as a .REG file:
Code:

But when i merge that with the registry, the IrfanView item does not get deleted:



and as seen in the registry:



so I deleted it by hand, and at last have the entries I (or rather, the OP) want:




Note that my manually added reg entry is of type Binary', as there seems to be no way to add a value of type 'None'.

So it seems that DPE cannot cope with entries in the 'Progids' list, and something makes some programs fall into that list, rather than the 'openwithlist'. I am sorry for any typos above, or pictures in the wrong place - can't be bothered to check it too thoroughly. Hope it helps someone!

atb, Martin