Another day, another free utility that puts nifty function in the right click context menu.
And although it may seem that we’ve seen a lot of the functions that Lammer Context menu offers before, a closer look will reveal some very interesting and noteworthy functions on here, such as mounting folders as virtual drives, search and replace file contents, batch file-and-folder renaming, select all similar files by type, and path operations (copy/move/list/delete) using regular expressions. Supports 32 bit and 64 bit operating systems both.
This app was mentioned in the comments section of my JDcontextmenu review (thanks reader “Free” for letting me know about it).
This was the same discussion where it was mostly agreed that LopeSoft’s FileMenu Tools was likely the best free app (or at least one of the best) in it’s class in terms of installing useful functions in the context menu.
However, you should definitely check out Lammer Context menu for the following reasons:
- The functions are noteworthy and interesting (see my top 5 favorites below)
- The program is generally very well designed; you can tell that a lot of attention to detail went into each and every function.
- 32 bit and 64 bit versions available. I mention this because every since I switched to 64 bit Windows 7 a few months ago I’ve noticed that a lot of Windows extensions do not offer 64 bit support. It plays nice with the Windows UAC as well.
My Top 5 Lammer Context Menu functions
(1) Batch Rename:
Very handy tool with a well designed tabbed interface. Supports a wide range of interventions, and can be used to batch-rename files using a base name and number sequence. Will display previews of changes before renaming.
(2) Mount path as virtual drive:
This option allows you to right click on any folder and mount is as a virtual drive; i.e. give it its own drive letter and access it as a drive from “My Computer”. This lasts until you reboot or right click on the virtual drive and unmount the folder later on. If you want a more permanent way to do this, or at least one that survives a reboot, check out previously mentioned Visual Subst.
(3) Search and replace
Right click on a folder in order to perform search and replace operations on the files within it. You can search using regular expressions and search recursively through subdirectories as well. Search results are neatly displayed within the interface and so that you can preview the search/replace operation before implementing.
(4) Path operations
This will let you perform copy/move/delete or change attribute operations on folder contents intelligently. Suppose you want to move all files that are bigger than x K in size, whose modification date is on or after a certain date, who have either .jpg, .gif, or .png extensions to a new folder while preserving relative paths, this function can easily do this for you. This function will process folders recursively, supports regular expressions, and will let you invert your set of results by simply checking a box.
What’s worth mentioning is that if you have a set of criteria/filters that you want to re-use you can easily save them as a template.
(5) Select by Type
Right click on any file and choose “select by type” and all of the files of the same extension in that location will be selected for you. Very cool.
The verdict: this app gives an impression of being generally well designed and well built. What I like about it is that it packages a range of useful functions in one place in the right-click context menu. Aside from my favorite functions detailed above, it also includes staple functions that everyone should have such as “command prompt in current folder”, “copy path”, “jump to shortcut target”, and “calculate checksum”, etc.
And although it doesn’t offer the range of functions that FileMenu tools offers (or the ability to customize the context menu and manage other, third party extensions), it still offers a lot of value.
Note that this app is still in its early stages and some aspects of it (e.g. help files) are not fully implemented yet. These kinks will be ironed out in time, and I hope that new functions will be made available going forward, as mentioned somewhere on the program web site.
Version Tested: 1.0.1.4
Compatibility: Supports Windows XP through Windows 7, 32 and 64bit. Requires .NET Framework 3.5.1 for XP.
Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 1.51 megs).
