Off-Topic: Windows Explorer Tip: Shift Right-Click

For some reason, Microsoft has decided to hide some decidedly useful features in Windows 10 explorer behind the non-intuitive and rather unknown “shift-key + right-click” combination.

Copy path to file

To get the path to a file, do shift-right-click on the file and select “copy as path”:

Shift-right-click on the file, select “copy as path”, and then paste the path somewhere

Open command prompt

To open either the standard old Windows command prompt or the new fancy PowerShell, in a certain location: shift-right-click on the background of the folder and select “Open PowerShell window here” (or “Open Command Prompt here”).

Open PowerShell or CMD in a folder

To select between classic command prompt and PowerShell, there is an option in the settings that do not actually mention this particular way of opening the shell:

The only gripe I have with this feature is that it requires you to find an empty spot in the window… which is not all that easy when looking a folder with a lot of files in list or details mode.

But then there is the second way to get to “Open command prompt”: use shift-right-click on a folder to get a new shell located in that folder.

The right-click menu you get for a folder. With the command prompt option shown. For some reason, my right-click menus grow to ridiculous lengths as I tend to install a lot of little utilities in order to get the job done..


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