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

Did you know your keyboard has a menu crucial? On whole-dimension keyboards, you’ll find it to the remaining of your right Ctrl crucial. This essential opens context menus, but you can tweak it to make it a lot more valuable.

Where’s the Menu Important on Your Keyboard?

On whole-measurement keyboards, the menu important is positioned concerning the proper Windows key and the right Ctrl essential to the proper of the Place bar. The menu important is also at times referred to as the “application vital.”

Some scaled-down keyboards—for instance, laptop computer keyboards—omit the menu essential to save room. Other more compact keyboards omit the proper Home windows crucial and leave the menu important among the suitable Alt and Ctrl keys.

Possibly way, if your keyboard has a menu essential, it’ll be to the still left of your appropriate Ctrl important. It doesn’t have the word “menu” printed on it—it has a minimal image that seems to be like a menu. This photograph is not standardized and will appear various on distinctive keyboards. Sometimes it displays a compact pointer hovering higher than a menu and sometimes it appears like a stylized menu—a square or rectangle with some horizontal strains inside of it.

What is the Menu Critical For?

The menu critical opens a context menu for your present application. It is in essence like proper-clicking on your variety in the software.

Check out it—press the menu essential while viewing this net page and you will see your world-wide-web browser’s context menu, just as if you experienced proper-clicked on the web site.

This is key is beneficial if you really don’t have a mouse or really don’t have a mouse with a appropriate mouse button. It will work in lots of various apps. If you decide on a file or folder in File Explorer and push the menu key, you are going to see a context menu just as if you had proper-clicked on the file.

This important will make it doable to use the context menu with just the keyboard and without a mouse. Push the menu vital, use the arrow keys to pick an option, and push Enter to activate it. Pick text or other factors with keyboard shortcuts and press the menu vital to activate context menu options—all without the need of your fingers leaving the keyboard.

Microsoft is now talking about converting this critical into an Office key to match the Home windows crucial. Most Pc end users very likely never touch this vital, which describes why Microsoft is floating the plan of shifting it. It is a bit of a relic, like the Sys Rq, Scroll Lock, and Pause Split keys.

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

Change+F10 Can Function Like a Menu Crucial, Far too

If your keyboard does not have a menu essential, but you want to open a context menu with a keyboard shortcut, in no way panic. You can push Change+F10 in most purposes to open up a context menu. It is essentially the identical detail as the menu important.

This does not work in every application, however—it relies upon on the programs. If almost nothing transpires in the software you’re working with, attempt Ctrl+Change+F10.

How to Remap the Menu Vital

The menu vital isn’t pretty as frustrating as the Home windows vital, which can get you out of games and other complete-monitor purposes if you unintentionally push it. However, you may want to improve the behavior of the menu key and have it do some thing additional helpful. After all, that’s key keyboard genuine estate likely to squander if you’re not applying the important.

We like SharpKeys for promptly remapping a important to one more critical. You can remap keys in the Home windows Registry, but it’s considerably far more complicated. SharpKeys gives a effortless graphical interface that customizes the underlying registry values for you.

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

Find “Special: Application (E0_5D)” in the still left pane. You can also click on “Type Key” and push the menu key—as we talked about previously mentioned, it is sometimes referred to as the “application vital,” as it is right here.

In the ideal pane, select whatsoever vital you want to remap the menu key to. For instance, you can select “Web: Back” and the crucial will functionality as a back again crucial in your web browser and any other application that supports this important.

When you’re completed, click on “OK.”

Click “Write to Registry” to write your changes to the Home windows Registry. You will now have to shut the SharpKeys window and then possibly reboot your Personal computer or indicator out and indicator back again in. Your variations will choose result when you next signal in.

If you want to alter what the important does or undo your modifications, open up SharpKeys as soon as once more, select your rule, and use the “Edit” or “Delete” button to modify or delete it. Create your improvements to the registry and then signal out and again in yet again.

You can use SharpKeys to reassign other keys, too—for instance, you can make the Caps Lock or Windows essential purpose as other keys.

How to Customise the Menu Critical Making use of AutoHotkey

For a lot more sophisticated customization, we advocate AutoHotkey. You can use AutoHotkey to write a brief tiny script that will listen for the menu important and conduct other actions when you press it. In AutoHotkey, this important is termed the “AppsKey.”

For illustration, the subsequent line in an AutoHotkey script will disable the menu crucial (“AppsKey”) and bring about it to do almost nothing (“Return”):

AppsKey::Return

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

AppsKey::
Run WINWORD
return

There is a good possibility the menu vital will go absent at some position. With keyboards still getting Scroll Lock keys, however, there is a great chance the menu key will even now be about for many years to arrive.

Linked: How to Create an AutoHotkey Script