Has anyone written a windows 11 shell extension?

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The context menu in the Windows 11 File Explorer has moved all shell extensions to the "shift-F10" submenu.

The available documentation seems to state that Win32 apps must be installed using UWP methods to integrate with the Win11 Explorer. This documentation is difficult to follow. "Package identity"?

There is a single example that, based on the accompanying comments, doesn't appear to work.

This is for an in-house tool. There is neither need nor desire to make it distributable via the Microsoft Store, which seems to be the aim behind UWP.

What I have tried:

I've searched quite a bit, and results all come back to the single example.

Posted 8-Apr-22 13:24pm

Gary R. Wheeler

Updated 8-Apr-22 15:48pm

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**`Randor`** · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-08T15:48:00

Hi,

You can install the Windows SDK[^] and the MakeAppx and SignTool utilities are included.

The steps you need to take are here:
Grant identity to non-packaged desktop apps[^]

It's not as difficult as it looks, you can use this old code sample to register your package[^].

Edit: I want to mention that the MSDN document title might be confusing. Whoever wrote it should have used "Grant identity to non-MSIX-packaged desktop apps"

Just want to clarify that you will need to build and register a sparse package.