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Asked: 2026-06-05T04:22:53+00:00

I am adding a file association to the registry so that the Open with

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I am adding a file association to the registry so that the “Open with” right-click menu will show my program. To simplify, suppose my program is “MyTextEditor.exe”, and it operates on .txt files. So I add these keys and values to the registry:

HKCR\.txt\OpenWithProgids\MyTextEditor.txt  (no value)
HKCR\MyTextEditor.txt                       "Text file"
HKCR\MyTextEditor.txt\shell\open\command    "C:\Program Files (x86)\MyTextEditor\MyTextEditor.exe" "%1"

After these keys are added, if I right-click on a .txt file and choose the “Open with” menu: I see a list like

  • Microsoft Office Word
  • mytexteditor.exe
  • Notepad
  • Notepad++ : a free (GNU) source code editor
  • Wordpad

However, I really want to see some nicer title like “My Wonderful Text Editor” in the menu, not just “mytexteditor.exe”.

So how do the nicer more readable program titles get into the “Open with” menu?

If I search the registry for program titles I see in “Open with”, I only find strings like “Microsoft Office Word” and “Notepad++ : a free (GNU) source code editor” in various MuiCache entries. My impression is that I wouldn’t add things to MuiCache directly.

(Probably irrelevant details, but I’ll mention them anyway: I’m using Inno Setup for the registry entries, and the program is a wrapper created by launch4j.)

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The only thing you need to do is provide a VERSIONINFO resource in your executable. Windows will take the FileDescription entry and use it instead of the executable’s name in the Open With menu.

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