DeskIntegrator puts you in control of the right-click menu

Your PC is packed with applications, and you need to be able to launch them at speed. So of course you might start by creating a few shortcuts, and either dropping them on your desktop, and pinning them to the taskbar. It’s simple, and straightforward – but of course it can also quickly become very messy.

If you’d prefer a clean desktop, then, you might be interested in DeskIntegrator’s approach. This compact free tool adds applications to the desktop context menu, and launching them becomes as easy as right-clicking the desktop, and choosing whatever you need from the list.

The program is convenient to use. It’s portable, so there’s no installation: just download, unzip and launch it (as an Administrator), and you’re ready to go. The core process is very similar to creating a shortcut. You’ll enter a title (the name that will appear in the menu), a path (browse to its executable), optionally provide a custom icon. You can choose approximately where your entry will appear in the menu, too -- the top, middle or bottom -- which could be useful if you want to group similar applications together.

When you’re ready, click “Add/Modify” to insert your chosen program. You can then enter the details of another program, or just right-click the desktop to see how your custom context menu is looking.

And if you discover you’ve made a mistake, no problem -- clicking the “Remove Menu” tab displays a list of all your menu customisations (as well as the standard Windows options, and anything added by third-party tools), and allows you to delete whatever you like. This is useful, but you do need to be careful here: there’s no “Are you sure?” prompt after you’ve clicked “Remove”, and if you accidentally delete the standard Windows “Screen resolution” entry, say, there’s no way to bring it back.

DeskIntegrator does have one notable problem. The program absolutely must have administrative rights, and if that doesn’t happen, it handles the situation very poorly. On our PC it displayed a misleading alert about “Registry permissions” before crashing with a .NET error message; not too impressive.

Still, while this is sloppy, it’s easy to avoid: just manually run the program as an administrator when necessary (right-click, select “Run as Administrator”), or configure it to run this way all the time (right-click DeskIntegrator.exe, select Properties > Compatibility and check “Run this program as an Administrator”).

With the rights issue out of the way, though, DeskIntegrator works very well. We’d still try to keep its use to a minimum, just to avoid cluttering the desktop context menu and making it harder to access other entries. But, if you prefer your desktop to have the minimum of visible and pinned shortcuts, then DeskIntegrator just might be able to help.

Photo Credit: ARENA Creative/Shutterstock