Classic Shell: Forum

What a pain that Win 10 Anniversary Update removed Classic Shell. Just installed Classic Shell 4.3.0 (was using 4.2.5 before) and it has introduced the following bug:

You can no longer access menu items starting with P, S, C, R, L or U through the keyboard because Classic Shell takes precedence for the following menu items with those characters used as accelerators (marked with underscore):

Programs
Settings
Search
Help and Support
Run...
Log Off <username>...
Shut Down...

I'm downgrading to 4.2.5 until this is fixed.

The change in Classic Shell after version 4.2.5 was that if a menu item's Label field has an accelerator key defined using an ampersand (&) character, it will be executed when you press the key, ignoring other items that begin with that letter. You can just remove the & from the Label or ini file that supplies that label (C:\Program Files\Classic Shell\StartMenuL10N.ini) for these items and you will be able to access other menu items such as the pinned and recent programs.

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Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

Thanks a lot for your prompt reply! I've now removed the accelerator keys from the built-in menus, it would have taken too long to add it to my 30+ menu items. This means that I can't reach the built-in menu items through the accelerators I could before but my own menu items are more important so I just have to live with that.

I think it would have been beneficial to add a preference towards pre-4.2.5 behavior when you introduce such a big change.

Your other 30+ menu items - are these pinned shortcuts or items added via the Customize Start Menu tab? You can add an ampersand character to them and leave the ampersand character for the built-in items too so you can access both. Especially when you upgrade to a newer version it will restore the built-in labels again.

You will have to do it once for your menu items but after that it should work.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

They're pinned shortcuts to the programs I use most often. The old standard Start Menu always worked without & accelerators so with this change you're moving away from standard Start Menu.

I'm not keen on spending a lot of time renaming the 30+ menu items but if I do, how/where do I do I rename them? Right-clicking and choosing Rename doesn't work, it shows the &, doesn't underline the character after &.

Oh OK. I suggested the renaming only for menu items added from Customize Start Menu tab. For pinned shortcuts, adding & is not required and will not work. But there is no reason why the built-in menu items shouldn't work too. If you press C once and then Enter, the pinned program with C should open. If you press C again, Control Panel should open. If there is only one program with C, then it will directly open without the need to press Enter.

The & only tells the menu to *prefer* the item which has it. Since you removed the & from built-in items, it should still be accessible via keyboard accelerators, it just won't be preferred.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.