Finding 'new' context menu items from Store Apps

There are items arriving in the 'new' Windows 11 context menu which don't conform to the old rules. Most I've seen come with store apps, but some. such as the new Context menu item for Notepad++ are provided in special installers. I do know that this site has tutorials for blocking context menu items from bundled store apps such as Photos and Clip Champ. I'm looking for a generalised method for finding them.

As far as I can tell, available context menu editors only work with traditional context menu items found in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT under shell, or shellex\ContextMenuHandlers keys for some specific type(s) of object. This makes it reaasonably straightforward to find, and block them, Some type specific menu items such as the Windows provided image verbs such as rotatet90 and rotate270 (Rotate Right and Rotate Left context menu items) seem to be whitelisted, and appear in the 'new' context menu, but can be blocked, in the same way as in the old context menu,

'new' items such as 'edit with clipchamp' which are associated with store apps don't appear under the registry keys for the type(s) they affect. However, as with shellex\ContextMenuHandlers items they seem to be Com objects. I've been loooking for ways of finding them, and the best way I've found so far is to search under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PackagedCom\Package for the value SurrogateAppId .

Under 24H2 regedit allows you to confine a search under a specific key which helps, Alternatively, and more conveniently, Nirsoft's' RegScanner will create a list. The data for those SurrogateAppId values are the GUIDs for the Com objects. You can expect to find other values in the same keys that confirm that this is a context menu item.

Having found them, you can block them by creating REG_SZ values using the GUIDs under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Blocked . The data doesn't matter, so using the DisplayName is convenient as it helps to identify what's being blocked.

What I don't know is how reliable the registry search is for finding Store App and other third party 'new' context menu items.

An interesting app, last updated in April last year. It’s been going for longer than 10 years.

There are some examples on the page here, I am kind of in between meetings and don’t have time to see if it’s of any use to you.
Link for 32 and x64Bit at the top of the page (We’re not allowed to post exe downloads here, for good reason)



There is also RegScanner


x64Bit version

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/ regscanner-x64.zip
Remove the space after /utils/ for the link to work.