How to add the “Pin to Start Screen” menu item to all files in Windows 8.1

With Windows 8.1, Microsoft has restricted access to the 'Pin to Start Screen' menu command for 3rd party apps. You might be curious, what does it mean? While in Windows 8, apps were able to get programmatic access to that menu item. You might see such behavior in Mozilla Firefox installer: after the install, it "pins" itself  to the taskbar. The same thing could be implemented in Windows 8, any app was able to pin itself to the Start Screen. Not so in Windows 8.1.

Why did Microsoft do this? Because they wanted to prevent the Start Screen from getting cluttered. Unlike Windows 8 (which pins everything to its Start screen like a maniac), Windows 8.1 keeps its Start Screen clean. As a result of these changes, the command I mentioned above is now strictly accessible only from Explorer! This is also why my application, Pin To 8, was not able to pin anything to the Start screen.

Today I will show you, how you can extend File Explorer in Windows 8.1 and add the ability to pin ANY file or object to the Start Screen. No 3rd party apps will be required, only a simple registry tweak.

Merge the following registry file and you are done:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\*]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\*\shellex]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\PintoStartScreen]
@="{470C0EBD-5D73-4d58-9CED-E91E22E23282}"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\AllFileSystemObjects]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\AllFileSystemObjects\shellex]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\AllFileSystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\AllFileSystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\PintoStartScreen]
@="{470C0EBD-5D73-4d58-9CED-E91E22E23282}"

Double click on the "Add Pin to Start Screen.reg" file to merge it.  To remove the context menu item, merge the "Remove Pin to Start Screen.reg" file.

You can download ready-to-use files from here:

Download ready-to-use registry files

Once you have merged Add Pin to Start Screen.reg, you will get the "Pin to Start Screen" context menu item unlocked for every file, and every file system object in Explorer.

See the following video to check it in action:

Bonus tip: my Winaero Tweaker application now has the ability to enable/disable this context menu directly from the UI so if you use it, you don't have to use registry files. Check the following option:

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