Add "Open with Notepad" to Context Menu

People often need to deal with various file types and fortunately Windows made it easy, we simply double click the file and it magically opens in its default editor/viewer. But what if the file is of a type our PC doesn't know? In this case Windows will open a list of known application and you will have to choose one to open your file with. But if you know this is some kind of text file, why not simply open with with Notepad without going through all these unnecessary steps? In this article I will show you how to do this easily and more specifically how to add an "Open with Notepad" option to the context menu for all files.

All you have to do is to open Notepad and paste the following code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open with Notepad]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open with Notepad\command]
@="notepad.exe %1"

Then save the file as "Open with Notepad.reg" and double click it to add it to the registry. An "Open with Notepad" option will appear when you right-click a file on your desktop or in Windows Explorer.

If you for some reason want to remove the "Open with Notepad" option, simply open Notepad and paste the following code in it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open with Notepad]

Save the file as "Remove Open with Notepad.reg" and double click it to apply it to the registry.