Think AI actions in Windows 11 are pointless? Microsoft is letting you banish them from the right-click menu
- Windows 11 has a new preview build
- It fully removes AI actions if you’ve disabled them all in File Explorer
- This means there will no longer be an empty folder in the right-click menu for AI actions that have been turned off
Windows 11 just got a change for the better in terms of AI – albeit only in testing for now – which removes some clutter related to the AI actions feature.
That functionality pertains to File Explorer’s right-click context menu, but it’s more of a refinement to existing options than anything else (and I’ll come back to why later). Even so, it’s going to be well-received; you can count on that.
Windows Central reported on Microsoft announcing a simple but functional change in a new Windows 11 preview (build 26220.7344): “If there are no available or enabled AI Actions, this section will no longer show in the context menu.”
This means that if there are no possible AI actions with any given file that you’ve right-clicked, you no longer see the (empty) folder relating to said actions (or lack of them).
AI actions include things like asking Copilot to summarize a document or pulling off image-editing tricks on your photos (like erasing an object using AI).
Analysis: a mystifying omission
Essentially, this avoids the weird situation where you’ve gone into Settings and disabled all AI actions, and yet the AI actions option still appears in the right-click menu – even though when you mouse over it, it’s empty. Which, of course, made no sense whatsoever, and really, this is more of a fix than a feature.
You could previously disable these AI actions, in case you were wondering, so that isn’t a new feature, although it is a relatively recent addition. The change here is Microsoft‘s removal of the AI actions entry in the right-click menu if there aren’t any available AI shortcuts, as noted.
All this is part of Microsoft’s wider drive to declutter File Explorer’s right-click menu, which is a welcome initiative.
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Windows 11 has a new preview build It fully removes AI actions if you’ve disabled them all in File Explorer This means there will no longer be an empty folder in the right-click menu for AI actions that have been turned off Windows 11 just got a change for the…
