How To Sleep, Restart, Shutdown Windows 8 via Right Click Context Menu

Accessing power options in Windows 8 takes way too many steps. You first drag your mouse to the top right corner to activate Charms, click on Settings, click on Power and then click on Sleep, Shutdown or Restart. This can be reduced to just two steps by using Windows 8 keyboard shortcuts like ALT+F4 or Win+I, but it still isn’t as quick as one would like. With that in mind, SkyKOG on XDA Developers came up with a simple solution: put the Power options in the right click menu. Find how how to apply his ‘hack’ after the jump.

Before you begin, make sure the file name extensions are enabled. You can do this from File Explorer’s Ribbon UI > View tab > Show/hide > file name extensions.

Right click on Desktop, go to New, and select Text Document. You will see a “New Text Document.txt” file your desktop. Open it up and paste the following code inside it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Lock Computer]
"icon"="shell32.dll,-325"
"Position"="Bottom"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Sleep Computer]
"icon"="shell32.dll,-331"
"Position"="Bottom"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Restart Computer]
"icon"="shell32.dll,-221"
"Position"="Bottom"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Shutdown Computer]
"icon"="shell32.dll,-329"
"Position"="Bottom"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Lock Computer\command]
@="Rundll32 User32.dll,LockWorkStation"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Sleep Computer\command]
@="rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Restart Computer\command]
@="shutdown.exe -r -t 00 -f"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Shutdown Computer\command]
@="shutdown.exe -s -t 00 -f"

This is what it should look like.

Press Ctrl+S to save the file and close Notepad.

Now, left click on the file you just created. Press F12 to rename it. Change “.txt” to “.reg”. Click on “Yes” from the prompt window to change its format.

Now, double click on the .reg file you just renamed. Click on “Yes” in the Registry Editor window (shown above).

That’s it! If you right click anywhere on the desktop now, you’ll see four options for locking, restarting, shutting down and sleeping your computer.

We’ve tested this ourselves and can confirm that it is safe and works the way the developer claims. I was able to Lock, Shutdown and Restart my Windows 8 PC just fine. However, I did feel that it made Sleeping a slower process. I’m not sure why this is the case.

If you tried it out and didn’t quite like it, you can remove the options from the right click menu by downloading “the file remover.rar” from the link below, extracting its contents using a suitable software like 7-zip and double-clicking the .reg file placed inside it. Right clicking after doing this will not display any of the aforementioned power options.

[via XDA-Developers]

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Awais Imran

Growth Engineer at Jumpshare by day, Editor in Chief at Windows Clan by night. Interested in UX design, and public speaking. Always on the lookout for exciting challenges! You should check out my personal website to learn more.

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