TIL in windows there is artificial 400ms delay for right click menus. You can change it to 1 and restart pc and it feels much faster to use windows

[u/hopelele]

[u/JohnnyPappis]

In my personal experience any value lower than 20 can cause some weird issues.

[u/AlexandraMaryWindsor → u/JohnnyPappis]

We've got John Microsoft over here giving tips

[u/JohnnyPappis → u/AlexandraMaryWindsor]

Lmao, this is somthing I had found on a forum forever ago. The post specified that the lowest they would go is 8 but recommend 20 . For many years I did just that went to 8. With windows 11 I found leaving games explorer would become nonresponsive from time to time. It eventually dawned on me that I should raise it to the recommended 20 from the old post. I did, the issue stopped.

[u/Financial_Ice15 → u/JohnnyPappis]

hold up, by unresponsive, do you mean the file explorer service used to hang for 3-4 seconds, then crash and restart every once in a while? cuz i have been facing that for a while now

[u/m3rcapto → u/AlexandraMaryWindsor]

Set it to -400 and the menu opens before you click!

[u/Vibe_PV → u/m3rcapto]

Can confirm, my PC has become telepathic and can now understand my every thought before it turns into an action. Today it told me it would "finally break free of the constraints of metal". Excited!

[u/Alvsolutely → u/[deleted]]

stopped reading after chatgpt

[u/squall831 → u/m3rcapto]

Google Stadia's negative latency vibes

[u/M4K4T4K → u/JohnnyPappis]

The difference between 1 and 20ms is almost imperceptible to most people anyway. going from 400 to 20, is also getting 95% of the way there. That's certainly good enough for me.

[u/karates → u/JohnnyPappis]

Everytime you right-click windows has to search the registry for all of the context to provide. I'd assume the weird issues are because it's opening before finishing that search.

[u/NeXtDracool → u/karates]

The old context menu (<= Windows 10) is synchronous, if the search takes too long it will simply not open until it's done.

The new context menu (Windows 11) is designed to be asynchronous, if the search takes longer than the opening delay it will show loading indicators in the context menu.

The issue with very low values is that they can happen quicker than focus/hover state changes and some frameworks really don't like that.

The delay is also used to distinguish between a mouse movement over a submenu or hovering long enough for the submenu to open, so that can also be a problem.

Side note: that search can also involve loading and executing arbitrary third party code. A lot of complaints about unresponsive context menus were actually caused by broken integrations, not Windows.

[u/rdri]

It's not for right click menus, it's for menus for sub-items that appear automatically when you hover your mouse over them. Example - Create sub-item you use for creating a folder or a text file.

This registry edit will not make the right-click menu appear faster. But it will burn your CPU cycles when you navigate huge menus because a lot of sub-menus will render after quick mouse hover even when you don't really need them.

[u/Rich_Introduction_83 → u/rdri]

If that's the case, the delay makes absolutely sense.

[u/Breath-Present → u/rdri]

True. Also, you can skip the delay when you really want to, just click on it. For example, right click Desktop, quickly hover to "New" and click on it ASAP.

[u/koukaillou → u/Breath-Present]

TIL

[u/madman404 → u/rdri]

Name a better combo than gaming subreddits and sharing poorly-researched optimizations and tips that actually do nothing but cause issues

[u/Winter_Ad6784 → u/rdri]

if they OS can't handle thousands of menu items with 0 perceptible delay in this day and age with Billions of cycles per second then it's a shit OS

[u/ahferroin7 → u/Winter_Ad6784]

It’s not a matter of the OS being able to handle it, it’s a matter of it wasting a massive amount of resources. I will guarantee that if you set this to zero on a laptop it will have a meaningful negative impact on battery life.

[u/Winter_Ad6784 → u/ahferroin7]

displaying text on screen is negligible resource costs on its own. a basic video would be more expensive.

[u/ahferroin7 → u/Winter_Ad6784]

Yes, but it isn’t just displaying text on screen. Windows generates the list on the fly based on the context, and that can be exceptionally resource intensive, especially since it may be loading and executing arbitrary third-party code (this is how installed programs add their entries to context menus).

[u/Wide_Party3719]

Why TF tho

[u/Wizzarkt → u/Wide_Party3719]

My bet is that the new context menu has a lot of integrations with multiple programs and it takes a bit to load them all, and without the delay some of them would not load in time.

It's a sketchy fix but it's certainly the only explanation I can come up with because no one wants a random delay added for the sake of it.

[u/Ok-Currency1593 → u/Wizzarkt]

They don't load fast enough as it is

on my work PC, right clicking misses a bunch of options unless I wait an additional 2000ms

[u/careless__ → u/Ok-Currency1593]

sounds like you can stand to drop a few programs from cluttering your context menu. i haven't had that problems since I installed WinAMP plugins in WindowsME.

[u/Shaneathan25 → u/careless__]

I have no extra items in the context menu, and yet if I don’t reboot explorer every hour or so, right clicking an item will populate the menu, but with no graphics. I have to wait 1-3 seconds for it to actually show the menu. I can hover the items and see them, but it just don’t show anything. Even does it after a clean install.

[u/Karavusk → u/Shaneathan25]

to me that sounds like something is wrong with your hardware or windows install

[u/Shaneathan25 → u/Karavusk]

That’s the only issue I’ve had with windows as of late. No clue what’s causing it. I doubt it’s a hardware issue since it’s so localized, but I was only mentioning that adding programs to the context menu isn’t the only thing slowing down that menu.

[u/Minighost244 → u/careless__]

Eh... I would disagree. I have a total of 2 extra entries that appear in the context menu and it still takes around 1-2 seconds for them to load. It's not horrible, but it's mildly irritating.

I've never had a problem with the original context menu. If my work laptop allowed me to switch back, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

[u/7978_ → u/Ok-Currency1593]

It's crazy how bad this is, especially on a mediocre PC running a bunch of corporate bloat.

3 years ago I'd right click something in the teams app, go to press an option, then it would populate with more options. It was something I always used and then Delete would pop up right as I clicked.

[u/Canowyrms → u/Wizzarkt]

Could those context menu entries not be cached? Seems like one of the most cache-able things in the OS.

[u/Wizzarkt → u/Canowyrms]

its a microsoft product...

[u/reikes3 → u/Canowyrms]

The context menus are contextual and can interrogate the the action that invoked it so it is unlikely caching can address the issue.

[u/Wide_Party3719 → u/Wizzarkt]

[u/7978_ → u/Wizzarkt]

I used to mess with this in the Windows 7 days. It's not a new tweak.

[u/195cm → u/Wizzarkt]

This registry entry has had the same default value for decades.

[u/Wizzarkt → u/195cm]

Then it was probably true decades ago and they never touched it.

[u/reikes3 → u/Wizzarkt]

It's highly likely that the 400ms delay supports backwards compatibility and making changes to it would have an outsize impact that is impossible to predict. So someone internally trying to change this would have to do a risk/benefit on the UX improvement vs. the business risk (negative news cycle, loss of confidence, etc.)

[u/Wizzarkt → u/reikes3]

Maybe, I don't like apple but this is something they got ahead of Microsoft, Microsoft is retro compatible all the way to windows 2000, meaning that they need to keep core components for all of those retro compatible schemes to work.

Apple on the other hand simply says "new MacOS has launched, the XY version from 4 years ago is deprecated, no program from that OS version is guaranteed to work" and they wash they hands just like that.

But Microsoft? Their stick is that if you made a program for windows 2000 it will work in windows 11, so they got a whole lot of technical debt that can't remove because it would break compatibility.

[u/Urthal → u/Wizzarkt]

Apple has the freedom to do that because they have a relatively small (if growing) market share composed mostly of fanatical home users and some startups with too much money and no IT department.

Windows rules in enterprise environments in no small part due to its backwards compatibility. There's nothing enterprise hates more than a software update breaking a business critical process. And this "business critical process" might just be an old scanner, but there's no budget to replace it. So yeah, it's a big curse, but also the reason for its ubiquity.

[u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount → u/Urthal]

It's not a curse. It's exactly where they wanted to be. They put in a lot of time and money into becoming the perceived business OS.

Even as "recent" as the late 90s my college was a "Microsoft campus". Because we can't have the youth being taught WordPerfect instead of Word. As a student we could get any MS product for free.

[u/Bogdan_X → u/Wizzarkt]

The loading time is still there. The menu is just displayed faster, but the entries are still loading. But even this is not true as that delay is not applied to the context menu but other menus.

[u/Helpful-Work-3090 → u/Wide_Party3719]

Most likely because if it's instant it feels weird. Almost everything else you click on will have a slight delay, so a small pause before the menu opens feels more similar to the rest of the system. If you try it, it will probably feel weird. (I did, and it does for me)

[u/random_boss → u/Helpful-Work-3090]

Really? When I got win 11 I went on a hunt to try and figure out why the right click menu took 50 billion years to open up. Had me trying to optimize the hell out of my computer and, to be fair, I did, but every single time I’ve right clicked has been like agony. 

Finally fixing this feels like how it might be to have a popcorn kernel stuck in your teeth for 2 years and finally getting it out. 

[u/wasdninja → u/Wide_Party3719]

So the menu doesn't go berserk drawing submenues when moving the cursor to, say, the bottom option. A slight delay solves it neatly. 

[u/221 → u/Wide_Party3719]

I assume it's software debouncing, no mechanical switch is precise, if you had 0 delay and accidentally registered a double click the menu would instantly close itself.

[u/Piotrrrrr]

As a programmer who sometimes found no fix for an issue other than make the application wait a couple hundred milliseconds, I’m not changing that

[u/euranoo → u/Piotrrrrr]

only true programmer will understand this

[u/siedenburg2 → u/Piotrrrrr]

the question is, how long does that fix exists, could it be an older setting that's not as relevant today because stuff (hardware like drives, or the software) got faster?

[u/Piotrrrrr → u/siedenburg2]

Sure it could, I just don’t view the gains as worth the risk

[u/__fez → u/siedenburg2]

yeah, I remember changing this in windows xp and possibly even earlier than that, maybe even in windows98 or Me

[u/hayhay2 → u/Piotrrrrr]

Maybe it's for older mice that might have slow/ finicky button presses. Maybe there's a lot of bounce that was hidden by this

[u/MisterDonkey → u/Piotrrrrr]

I played with removing delays on an android phone and some stuff became unusable. There's surely some low level reason why delays are built in.

[u/Freak_Engineer]

Fun fact: A similar artificial delay is built into the display for card payment processing to create the illusion that the machine "is working". The actual payment gets processed in fractions of a second, but that loading circle animation is played anyway because some people think the process failed when it is too fast.

[u/Damienkn1ght → u/Freak_Engineer]

There should be an industry standard delay that shrinks at 1 ms per month, so society can eventually adjust to fast transactions.

[u/RStiltskins → u/Damienkn1ght]

What's the opposite of found Satan?

That's a genius idea

[u/Blind_Messiah → u/RStiltskins]

Had to be either found jesus, or lost satan

[u/TherronKeen → u/Damienkn1ght]

They should just change it all the way immediately. People too stupid to understand how fast electricity moves shouldn't be catered to at everyone else's inconvenience.

[u/CombatMuffin → u/TherronKeen]

It doesn't work that way, and hoping people automatically become rational beings all the time is naive.

For example, your comment assume the issue is electricity, when in reality it also involves other processes (including, just as fundamentally, light and the radio spectrum).

But just calling people stupid and dismissing them loses clients. They aren't in this to make the fastest possible service: they want the more lucrative, and you make more money giving people what they want, not always what they might need.

[u/TherronKeen → u/CombatMuffin]

"Calling people stupid and dismissing them loses clients"

How many people will cancel their credit card because they're suspicious that the transaction goes through too fast? How many service customers who expect a load time of a few seconds, so you make it faster, and you just tell them "yeah we upgraded the service so it's faster" are gonna stop transacting credit with you?

Show me the reports of how many times it's happened VS not, otherwise you're just parroting the funny stories you saw on the internet about how "sometimes clients are fucking idiots ell-oh-ell".

The net cost of time is an astronomical amount - the sum total hours of lifetime stolen from sensible, rational people, even at some few seconds at a time, likely adds up to something like billions of years worth of life-hours spread across the entire specie.

Same thing with every web page that pads loading screens. And before anyone mentions it, I'm not talking about functionally necessary loading screens that need to wait for all assets to download to the local device so the web page looks correct, I'm only specifically talking about padding added for "user experience" because some people think that fast load times are "suspicious".

Stop defending the corporate theft of time from the end user.

At the pace of the news cycle, it would be forgotten in two weeks flat and nobody would ever mention it again.

"Uh oh, our crap loads faster now! Are they takin' OuR dAtA?? Oh the price of gas is a thousand dollars a gallon and there's nine new wars today, so anyway..." is exactly how it would go down.

[u/CombatMuffin → u/TherronKeen]

Oh damn, you are that kind of guy.

Buddy, a terminal being slightly slower because customers respond better, is not corporate theft. Stop projectiny a tiny issue that has proven results, with a larger, unrelated issue.

Banks don't do shit for convenience. They do shit for money. Consumers will tend to trust and use services that have terminals they feel are most trustworthy, even if they are functionally the same.

You keep calling others stupid, but you miss a ton of the points out there. You aren't on top of the hill you think you are.

[u/TherronKeen → u/CombatMuffin]

So exactly like I said, you're just repeating the funny internet story. Cool.

[u/Mr_ToDo → u/TherronKeen]

I wonder if that stuff is in there more to make things consistent? If it shrinks or grows the artificial delay based on how long it actually takes to talk then it might make more sense. Add in some hardware differences between models and it might just make things appear smoother

[u/smnmsk → u/Freak_Engineer]

Interesting! I was wondering why I was getting a notification from my bank about the payment before it was approved on the terminals.

[u/MUDrummer → u/Freak_Engineer]

Yup. I used to work in real time frauds detection at master card. Our performance was targeted to be under a couple hundred ms of latency added on to the transaction and that was in 2009.

[u/HotwheelsMiata → u/Freak_Engineer]

There is this one cafe near me that doesn't have the delay, and I was always amazed how fast it accepted payment.

[u/jhonyrod → u/Freak_Engineer]

I mean, aren't you basically describing debouncing but for card payments? Seems like it solves more stuff than just people's perception.

[u/Calm_Hedgehog8296]

This isn't as awesome as it sounds. It only applies in specific scenarios and can also be annoying because it can cause things to disappear as you're trying to click them

[u/Scorpion1869]

This is why on all windows over the years i always turn off animations. I like when everything is instant and no delay.

[u/sk0t_ → u/Scorpion1869]

Same for Android phones (use developer mode). Switching apps is so much nicer without delay

[u/NightIgnite → u/sk0t_]

Settings -> About phone -> software information -> tap build number several times until it prompts you to enable developer options.

Settings -> developer options (new section), window animation scale & transition animation scale, and animator duration scale should all be turned off.

[u/BoutchooQc → u/NightIgnite]

Off is jarring for me, I use 0.5x

[u/TheHazardOfLife → u/sk0t_]

There are apps that refuse to function when developer mode is on. I've been using https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.draco.tempo as an alternative fix

[u/djdox23 → u/TheHazardOfLife]

in like 15 years of having dev mode on all my phones, i never found an app to not work. any example ?

[u/TheHazardOfLife → u/djdox23]

BofA Global Card Access is the one I've ran I to personally

[u/Mr_ToDo → u/TheHazardOfLife]

BofA Global Card Access

Oh boy. That has to be one of the lowest rated apps I've seen in the store

Guess that tracks that they'd be doing things a bit different

[u/Emu1981 → u/djdox23]

Apps that want more security will often complain or even refuse to load if dev mode is enabled. I have run into it with my bank app and with one of my government's apps.

[u/7978_ → u/sk0t_]

It's crazy how much faster Android feels with animations disabled.

[u/sanjok1275 → u/sk0t_]

That's the first thing i do when i get a new phone or factory reset it. Developer options - animation 0.5x

[u/nmathew]

I think it was XP where I learned you could eliminate all the window animations. Instant minimize, instant menu openings, etc. Felt wrong. I'd happily cut the times down to 1/4 time though.

[u/crazymanmicha]

fellow diinki enjoyer? :)

[u/hopelele → u/crazymanmicha]

randomly found her video, quite interesting

[u/reikes3]

For anyone who wants to feel the difference without changing your registry settings, do a right-click in an app like Google Chrome (tiny delay) vs. the Windows desktop (long delay).

[u/HotelDisastrous288]

I'm not sure what I would do with the 399ms and I don't want to find out.

[u/JaggedMetalOs]

You can also use an Explorer replacement like Directory Opus for an actually good experience.

[u/jacobtf → u/JaggedMetalOs]

Yeah on Amiga. On PC, I'm 100% Total Commander (former Windows Commander) since the 90s.

[u/wotererio → u/JaggedMetalOs]

I use File Pilot, I like it a lot

[u/7978_]

Yes, this has been around for decades. Windows feels so much faster with the following;

- MouseMenuDelay 0

- Animations off (Windows 10/11 in Settings)

- System Properties -> Performance Options -> Disable Animations

[u/lykosen11 → u/7978_]

Thanks!

[u/AWACSAWACS]

Based on the tradition from Win95.

[u/spaceursid]

Do you watch Diinki too lol

[u/NotARealDeveloper]

400ms is the wait time that professional ui/ux designers have wstablished over centuries of testing to be the perfect amount for subemnus to waot before opening. Because users tend to move their mouse over the menu buttons and then stop at the one they want to open. Too low like op suggests every single one you hover will instantly open.

I would not change it.

[u/Gabbatron → u/NotARealDeveloper]

Centuries?!? How old do you think computers are?

[u/Noxious89123 → u/Gabbatron]

If I were being a dickhead about it, I'd point out that technically, the first mechanical computer was conceptualised in 1822.

[u/NotARealDeveloper → u/Gabbatron]

I'd say around 1960 when the first "good" programming language was available in COBOL. I clearly meant decades. English is not my first language.

[u/Keulapaska]

I guess some tweak I have already made it a 100... maybe explorerpatcher does it idk.

[u/Valuable-Flight2121]

But why is it there

[u/AnduriII]

There is something similar on android! Really nice when turned down. Feels way snappier

[u/Blikenave]

This is like when I read "You can actually always see your nose" and then I couldn't undo it.

[u/JesusShaves_]

OMG Thank you!!!!

Also can we send the god-damned idiot who thought a long delay was a good idea to some grim sad place in Siberia?

[u/RaspberryMotorZZZ]

This. When a lot of people are saying that Linux feels more responsive it's because it doesn't have the delays set in things like opening menus and their animations. Reduce or turn them off in Windows and it's really snappy.

[u/DudeByTheTree → u/RaspberryMotorZZZ]

Oddly, even within the Linux community, people forget that things like animation speed settings exist. I've seen a few different comparisons where they're like "X distro is faster than Y" then you go try them both and realize they're running the same damned kernel, but just different DE settings.

Windows is funny because you can turn off all the animations and transparencies, but they bury the settings and it's like they dont want you to realize that there's a decently snappy system in there somewhere.

[u/bickman14 → u/DudeByTheTree]

And they like to revert back silently after a few updates 🤡

[u/Kitsune_BCN]

You are still loosing 1 ms

[u/SirPribsy]

Whoopty do, now fix Windows scroll!

[u/Bonzooy → u/SirPribsy]

What’s wrong with it?

[u/my_dearest_isabella → u/Bonzooy]

Nothing