Shell extensions
Shell Extensions are right-click menu entries installed by other software — a cloud drive's "share link", an antivirus scan, the 7-Zip and TortoiseGit entries. tessoa's right-click menu lists them alongside its own. This page covers where they appear in the menu, how to stop one from showing up, and how to decide which extensions are worth waiting for.
This page applies to Windows only. On macOS and Linux tessoa builds its right-click menu from its own list of actions, and shell extensions do not exist there.
Where they appear in the menu
The right-click menu has two halves: tessoa's own entries on top, third-party entries appended below them. Third-party top-level rows carry a thin bar along their left edge, marking them as coming from the system rather than from tessoa; it is not repeated row by row inside their submenus. The placeholder rows that are still loading carry the bar too, from the first frame.
The two halves do not arrive together. tessoa's half is drawn immediately; the third-party half has to be fetched from the system, which usually takes a few hundred milliseconds. So the first time you right-click a target of that kind in a session, you see a few grey placeholder rows first, which then fill in — the rows expand and the text fades in. While that happens those rows read Loading this extension…, and an entry that cannot be read at all reads Failed to load — this one didn't come back.
From the second time on, tessoa remembers what those rows were, so the first frame of the menu is already the final layout: the reply only fills content into positions that are already in place, with no reshuffling in front of you.
Reading these extensions happens in a separate process. When one of them hangs or crashes, that process is what goes: the tessoa window doesn't drop a single frame, and this menu simply has no such section. tessoa's own entries are always drawn first and never wait for them.
Stopping an entry from appearing
To keep an entry out of the menu — whether it is a third-party one or one of tessoa's own — open the context menu order page and switch off the toggle at the right end of its row. This only decides whether tessoa draws it; nothing in the system changes, and right-click menus in other programs are unaffected.
A row switched off stays on that page in the same position, so you can switch it back on at any time.
Deciding which extensions get loaded
Some extensions are a line in the registry that the system reads straight off, at no real cost. Others require loading a DLL before they can say what they want to put in the menu. The second kind is what makes a right-click menu slow, and what this page is for.
- Open Settings, find the Input group and click Shell Extensions.
- Find the entry you want to adjust. The filter box above the list matches on the extension name and on the DLL file name.
- Click the button at the end of that row and pick one of four modes.
The list has two groups:
| Group | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Extensions that load a DLL | Those that need code loaded before their entries are known. Each row shows its DLL, roughly how long it takes and how much memory it uses |
| Entries that don't slow the menu down | Those the registry describes completely. They are marked nothing to load, and the note under the group reads These are read straight from the registry — no add-on is loaded, so there is nothing to tune. |
The four modes, from lightest to heaviest:
| Mode | What it means |
|---|---|
| Auto (follow the measurements) | tessoa decides from that extension's measured time and memory, and follows along as the machine changes. Once collapsed, the button shows which mode it currently lands on, for example Auto (Keep loaded) |
| Keep loaded | Stays in memory after the first load, making later right-clicks fast at the cost of holding that memory |
| Reload each time | Released after use. Saves memory, reloads on every right-click |
| Never load | Not loaded at all; its entries stop appearing |
The timing and memory at the end of each row are estimates, meant for comparing which entries cost more time and memory, not as precise measurements — and they only exist once you have opened a context menu at least once, which is what the note on the page says; rows that have never been measured leave those cells empty. After installing new software, click Rescan to build the list again.
The ⋯ button at the right end of the search box in the right-click menu opens this page directly, so when you spot an entry from a program you don't recognise you don't have to memorise its name and hunt for it in Settings.
Turning them all off
The context menu order page has a Show third-party shell menu items toggle at the top, on by default. With it off, tessoa's right-click menu contains only its own entries, and no third-party DLL is ever loaded because you right-clicked something.