A context menu (also called contextual, shortcut, and pop up or pop-up menu) is a

menu In a restaurant, the menu is a list of food and beverages offered to the customer. A menu may be à la carte – which presents a list of options from which customers choose, often with prices shown – or table d'hôte, in which case a pre-est ...

in a

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI) that appears upon user interaction, such as a right-click mouse operation. A context menu offers a limited set of choices that are available in the current state, or context, of the operating system or application to which the menu belongs. Usually the available choices are actions related to the selected object. From a technical point of view, such a context menu is a

graphical control element A graphical widget (also graphical control element or control) in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through direct m ...

History

Context menus first appeared in the

Smalltalk Smalltalk is a purely object oriented programming language (OOP) that was originally created in the 1970s for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, but later found use in business. It was created at Xerox PARC by Learni ...

environment on the

Xerox Alto The Xerox Alto is a computer system developed at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in the 1970s. It is considered one of the first workstations or personal computers, and its development pioneered many aspects of modern computing. It featu ...

computer, where they were called ''pop-up menus''; they were invented by

Dan Ingalls Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls Jr. (born 1944) is a pioneer of object-oriented computer programming and the principal architect, designer and implementer of five generations of Smalltalk environments. He designed the bytecoded virtual machine that m ...

in the mid-1970s.

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

v3.0 introduced the context menu for copy and paste functionality in 1990.

Borland Borland Software Corporation was a computing technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad, and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was developing and selling software development and software deployment products. B ...

demonstrated extensive use of the context menu in 1991 at the Second Paradox Conference in Phoenix Arizona.

Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles ...

/G for

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

v1.0 added additional formatting options in 1991. Borland

Quattro Pro Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Alludo, most often as part of Alludo's WordPerfect Office suite. Characteristics Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard commands close to those of Lotus 1-2-3. While ...

for Windows v1.0 introduced the Properties context menu option in 1992.

Implementation

Context menus are opened via various forms of user interaction that target a region of the GUI that supports context menus. The specific form of user interaction and the means by which a region is targeted vary: * On a computer running

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, or

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

running the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

, clicking the secondary mouse button (usually the right button) opens a context menu for the region that is under the mouse pointer. * For quickness, implementations may additionally support hold-and-release selection, meaning the pointer is held down and dragged, and released at desirable menu entry. * On systems that support one-button mice, context menus are typically opened by pressing and holding the primary mouse button (this works on the icons in the Dock on

) or by pressing a keyboard/mouse button combination (e.g. Ctrl-mouse click in

Classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Mac (computer), Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and end ...

and macOS). A keyboard alternative for macOS is to enable Mouse keys in

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. Then, depending on whether a laptop or compact or extended keyboard type is used, the shortcut is ++5 or +5 (numeric keypad) or ++i (laptop). * On systems with a

multi-touch In computing, multi-touch is technology that enables a surface (a touchpad or touchscreen) to recognize the presence of more than one somatosensory system, point of contact with the surface at the same time. The origins of multitouch began at CE ...

interface such as MacBook or Surface, the context menu can be opened by pressing or tapping with two fingers instead of just one. * Some cameras on smartphones for example recognize a QR code when a picture is taken. Then a pop-up appears if you want to 'open' the QR content. This could be anything like a website or to configure your phone to connect to

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

. See image. * On some user interfaces, context menu items are accompanied by icons for quicker recognition upon navigation. * Context menus can also have a top row of icons only for quick access to most frequently used options. Windows mouse click behavior is such that the context menu doesn't open while the mouse button is pressed, but only opens the menu when the button is released, so the user has to click again to select a context menu item. This behavior differs from that of macOS and most free software GUIs. * In Microsoft Windows, pressing the Application key or Shift+F10 opens a context menu for the region that has

focus Focus (: foci or focuses) may refer to: Arts * Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in East Australia Film *Focus (2001 film), ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based on the Arthur Miller novel *Focus (2015 ...

. Context menus are sometimes hierarchically organized, allowing navigation through different levels of the menu structure. The implementations differ:

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...

was one of the first applications to only show sub-entries of some menu entries after clicking an arrow icon on the context menu, otherwise executing an action associated with the parent entry. This makes it possible to quickly repeat an action with the parameters of the previous execution, and to better separate options from actions.

X Window Managers

The following

window manager A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of window (computing), windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They ...

s provide context menu functionality: * Awesome *

IceWM IceWM is a stacking window manager for the X Window System, originally written by Marko Maček. It was written from scratch in C++ and is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. It is customizable, relatively light ...

— middle-click and right-click context menus on

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

, menu bar, title bars, and title icon * olwm * openbox *

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Usability

Context menus have received some criticism from

usability Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a softw ...

analysts when improperly used, as some applications make certain features ''only'' available in context menus, which may confuse even experienced users (especially when the context menus can only be activated in a limited area of the application's client window). Context menus usually open in a fixed position under the pointer, but when the pointer is near a screen edge the menu will be displaced - thus reducing consistency and impeding use of

muscle memory Muscle memory is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition, which has been used synonymously with motor learning. When a movement is repeated over time, the brain creates a long- ...

. If the context menu is being triggered by keyboard, such as by using Shift + F10, the context menu appears near the focused widget instead of the position of the pointer, to save recognition efforts.

In documentation

Microsoft's guidelines call for always using the term ''context menu'', and explicitly deprecate ''shortcut menu''.

References

External links

{{Graphical control elements Graphical control elements Graphical user interface elements Macintosh operating systems user interface Windows administration