After making up my mind to say goodbye to the xx masters and xx guards on Windows a few years ago, I felt a little discomfort for a while. It's not that I'm not used to no one telling me that it took a few seconds to turn on, but these all-encompassing housekeepers can indeed provide some particularly useful gadgets, such as untampting files, right-click editing, ad pop-up blocking, and so on.
Fortunately, later I found that these small functions can be implemented with some simpler and purer applications. This article describes some of the tools I have collected, most of which are portable software, no need to install, click-and-click, and are very small, most of them within a few MB.
It should be noted that because of the special functional scenarios and the special requirements, most of the applications mentioned in this article will access the system kernel, modify the registry or some key files, so they may be mistaken by some security software as viruses, and they need to be manually added to the whitelist under the premise of ensuring that the download source is formal. Also, make a backup before use.
OpenArk: Quickly locate shortcuts and file occupancy
To know exactly which app is holding up the shortcut, you can open OpenArk, go to the interface, and select .
The app lists the registered global shortcuts for us to search. For example, we need to know which application occupies (pay attention to the input order), you can enter the corresponding shortcut key name in the filter bar at the bottom of the interface, it is not difficult to find that NetEase Cloud Music registered this key combination. Next, make changes in the NetEase cloud to remove the occupancy state.
Cursor Highlighter: Highlights the mouse cursor
When recording software tutorials or teaching online, the most common feedback received is that viewers or students "can't see where your mouse cursor is". Windows gives the mouse cursor too small by default, if the other party is using a mobile device, it is strange to be able to see the mouse clearly. The solution is to mark the mouse position with a conspicuous patch of color, as in the image below, or to create a local highlighting effect.
Kevin Stratvert introduces several solutions for highlighting mice in an easy-to-understand video, with cursor Highlighter being the most comprehensive and simplest to use. This compact app allows users to quickly switch between normal/patch/highlight modes using shortcut keys, and the mouse display in different modes can be fully customized.
After downloading the exe file, double-click to run it. Its settings interface needs to be called up by right-clicking the icon in the system tray.
Context Menu Manager: Edit the right-click menu
Windows' right-click menu is controlled by a scattered registry, and many users have the need to streamline or customize right-click menus. But whether it's setting them separately in different applications or manually editing registry values is actually inconvenient, Context Menu Manager integrates right-click registry entries throughout the system and gives them simple GUI, making this task a lot more convenient.
As shown in the image below, the app categorizes right-click entries by location, from the Windows logo to a specific file type. Specific to an article, we can adjust its icon, item position, command and other properties.
Custom Context Menu adds a custom menu grouping to windows 11's new right-click. The name of the group can be defined in the settings at the bottom right of the app. When you need to add a new entry, first click the plus sign at the top left of the application interface, type the menu details, click Save, and finally restart the explorer to take effect.
See another article: Using the registry and command line to make the right mouse button your own toolbox.
O&O ShutUp10++: Windows privacy settings integration