Allow MSIX installers to add context menu items

Support legacy context menus - MSIX | Microsoft Docs

Hi brasmusson 

If your app is under active development, you can add a context menu entry for your app via a File Type Association and verb registration in your AppxManifest.xml (or package.appxmanifest if you're using the Visual Studio packaging project). Have a look at this example for more details - Modernize existing desktop apps using Desktop Bridge | Microsoft Docs

Cheers,

Tanaka

This idea has been stale for 1.5 years now, and it is essential for adding my compression tool to the Store. See discussion here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/msix-packaging-and-tools/msix-packaging-tool-missing-file-type-associations/m-p/1834735#M936

ShakersMSFT : Do you have an update on the timeline for this being supported, if at all?

alexmarin89 yes, I absolutely understand what you're saying but it's not addressing the issue.  Let me choose a different example - let's say https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo as the example.  MediaInfo is a program that can open a video file and give you various details such as codec, bitrate, etc.

In this case, I wouldn't want MediaInfo to be the default program to open a video file (as obviously playback would be used more often).  MediaInfo's installer adds a right-click menu option but this is not supported by MSIX.  While your file association workaround would absolutely work for some programs, programs like MediaInfo need right-click menu support for best usability.

You can add context menu with MSIX, but you can do this only with File Type Associations (like in VLC for example) that point to an executable (you can call this a shell menu).

Context menus are not added via the registry in MSIX, these must be added in the AppManifest.xml.

You can read more about this here:

https://www.advancedinstaller.com/msix-context-menu.html