Experience .Net Apps quickly and easily with the help of DevWinUI, Everything you need to develop an application is gathered in one place.

Add Custom Context Menu For Windows 11, We use the following project to create menus https://github.com/ikas-mc/ContextMenuForWindows11
Therefore, make sure that your app is a Packaged Application and not a UnPackaged.
You can use DevWinUI.ContextMenu in any .Net >= 8.0 apps which supports Package Identity. this means you can use it in WPF or WinForm with MSIX Packaging.

Download and Install

Nuget	Github
DevWinUI.ContextMenu	Github

1	Install-Package DevWinUI.ContextMenu

After installing, add the following codes to Package.appxmanifest

  xmlns:com="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/com/windows10"
  xmlns:uap3="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/uap/windows10/3"
  xmlns:desktop="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/desktop/windows10"
  xmlns:desktop4="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/desktop/windows10/4"
  xmlns:desktop5="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/desktop/windows10/5"
  xmlns:desktop10="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/desktop/windows10/10"
<Extensions>
    <desktop4:Extension Category="windows.fileExplorerContextMenus">
        <desktop4:FileExplorerContextMenus>
            <desktop5:ItemType Type="Directory">
                <desktop5:Verb Id="CustomMenu" Clsid="YOUR_GUID" />
            </desktop5:ItemType>
            <desktop5:ItemType Type="*">
                <desktop5:Verb Id="CustomMenu" Clsid="YOUR_GUID" />
            </desktop5:ItemType>
            <desktop5:ItemType Type="Directory\Background">
                <desktop5:Verb Id="CustomMenu" Clsid="YOUR_GUID" />
            </desktop5:ItemType>
            <desktop10:ItemType Type="Drive">
                <desktop10:Verb Id="CustomMenu" Clsid="YOUR_GUID" />
            </desktop10:ItemType>
        </desktop4:FileExplorerContextMenus>
    </desktop4:Extension>
    <com:Extension Category="windows.comServer">
        <com:ComServer>
            <com:SurrogateServer  DisplayName="Custome Context Menu">
                <com:Class Id="YOUR_GUID" Path="ContextMenuCustomHost.dll" ThreadingModel="STA"/>
            </com:SurrogateServer>
        </com:ComServer>
    </com:Extension>
    <uap3:Extension Category="windows.appExecutionAlias">
        <uap3:AppExecutionAlias>
            <desktop:ExecutionAlias Alias="YOUR_APPNAME"/>
        </uap3:AppExecutionAlias>
    </uap3:Extension>
</Extensions>

Replace YOUR_APPNAME with your applications name. (for example App.exe)
Replace All YOUR_GUID with your GUID.(19E348CC-C459-4103-8415-ACB13961B26A) Follow the instructions below to create a new guide.

drive menu support (windows 11 22621+)

How to Create GUID?

1.Open Visual Studio
2.From Tools menu Select Create GUID option

3.Click New GUID, then Change GUID Format to Registry Format and Finally Click on Copy

Note that the created GUID is surrounded by { and }. We don’t need them, so you have to delete them.

for example:

Change this
{DDED3896-A379-42EA-AB1F-64B0DBD0328D}
to this:
DDED3896-A379-42EA-AB1F-64B0DBD0328D

Attributes

Name	Remark
File
FileName
Enabled
Title
Exe
Param
Icon
IconDark
AcceptDirectory
AcceptDirectoryFlag
AcceptFile
AcceptFileFlag
AcceptExts
AcceptFileRegex
AcceptMultipleFilesFlag
PathDelimiter
ParamForMultipleFiles
Index
ShowWindowFlag
WorkingDirectory

Methods

Name
QueryAllAsync
GetMenusFolderAsync
SaveAsync
ReadAsync
RenameMenuFile
DeleteAsync
IsEnabled
EnableAsync
BuildToCacheAsync
ClearCache
ConvertMenuFromJson
ConvertMenuToJson
OpenMenusFolderAsync
OpenMenuFileAsync
GetCustomMenuName
SetCustomMenuName
ClearAllMenus
ReplaceMenu
RefreshMenuAsync
CheckMenuExistsAsync

Open Your App.xaml.cs file and in your OnLaunched method, Create a new ContextMenuItem.


using DevWinUI;

protected async override void OnLaunched(LaunchActivatedEventArgs args)
{
    ....
    ContextMenuItem menu = new ContextMenuItem
    {
        Title = "YOUR_MENU_TITLE",
        Param = @"""{path}""",
        AcceptFileFlag = (int)FileMatchFlagEnum.All,
        AcceptDirectoryFlag = (int)(DirectoryMatchFlagEnum.Directory | DirectoryMatchFlagEnum.Background | DirectoryMatchFlagEnum.Desktop),
        AcceptMultipleFilesFlag = (int)FilesMatchFlagEnum.Each,
        Index = 0,
        Enabled = true,
        Icon = ProcessInfoHelper.GetFileVersionInfo().FileName,
        Exe = "YOUR_APPNAME"
    };

    ContextMenuService menuService = new ContextMenuService();
    await menuService.SaveAsync(menu);
}

Replace YOUR_APPNAME with your applications name. (for example App.exe)
Replace YOUR_MENU_TITLE with your menu title. (for example Open App Here)

make sure your Type is set to *

1
2
3

<desktop5:ItemType Type="*">
    <desktop5:Verb Id="CustomMenu" Clsid="YOUR_GUID" />
</desktop5:ItemType>

then you need to change AcceptFileFlag and AcceptExts

1 2	AcceptFileFlag = (int)FileMatchFlagEnum.ExtList, AcceptExts = ".pkg\|.pup",

Fix Some Issues

if you dont see any menu items, make sure that the ContextMenuCustomHost.dll file is copied next to the executable file.
We will do this by default and you don’t need to do anything, but if you have a problem, First of all, make sure that the ContextMenuCustomHost.dll file is copied next to the executable file.
Restart Explorer.exe process

If you have several menus, they will be created as sub-menus, Therefore, you can change the name of the main menu with the following code

1	menuService.SetCustomMenuName("MyApp Main Menu");

Examples

there is a lot of examples here, take a look here to see how properties can be filled.

More Deatils

see here for more details.

DevWinUI.ContextMenu