Nilesoft Shell Pro 2.0.0

Nilesoft Shell Pro 2.0.0 is a community fork of Nilesoft Shell by Moudey and Nilesoft: the same context-menu extension and .nss configuration language, with security and stability fixes, a per-user mode that needs no administrator rights, and an app to set it up and configure it. It is not an official Nilesoft release.

Caution

If the original Nilesoft Shell is installed, uninstall it before installing Nilesoft Shell Pro. Pro has its own name and does not replace the original (installed with its own installer, winget, Scoop or Chocolatey, or a portable copy), so both stay registered with Explorer and collide: the context menu can stop appearing or show up twice. Uninstall it from Settings > Apps > Installed apps; for a portable copy run shell -unregister -restart from its folder and delete the folder. Back up your shell.nss and imports folder first if you want to keep your configuration. Updating from an earlier Nilesoft Shell Pro version is fine.

Documentation: https://abdullah-masood-05.github.io/Shell/. About this fork there lists everything this fork changes, and each earlier release lists its own changes.

What's new in 2.0.0

• A new look for the app: a blue-tinted dark theme on #101823 (and a matching light theme), a refreshed sidebar, cards and controls on every page.
• Themes gallery on the Appearance page: the original Nilesoft Shell example themes (Default, Shell 1.8, Acrylic, Gradient, Clear acrylic, Accent outline, Flat, Blue, Gray, Green, Yellow), previewed on your wallpaper and applied with one click.
• Open with: add "Open with" items for VS Code, Zed, Cursor, Windsurf, Sublime Text, Notepad++, JetBrains IDEs, Visual Studio, Windows Terminal and more, detected automatically, plus your own apps.

Fixed since the betas

• No context menu after installing over an older manual install (for example a copy in C:\Windows\nilesoft). Registering left one of Shell's COM entries pointing at the old DLL, so Explorer loaded two copies and showed no menu. Registering now repoints or removes stale entries (and -register no longer reads uninitialised options), a second copy in the same Explorer no longer hooks menus, and shell -status lists any conflicts. The app shows a warning with a one-click fix. Already affected? Installing this build repairs it; otherwise use Fix on the app's Home page, or scripts/repair-stale-registration.ps1 -Fix as administrator.
• Taskbar menu showed only Terminal and Go To. this.count counted every configured item instead of the menu's own Windows items, which hid the taskbar block (Apps, Windows, Desktop, Settings, Task Manager, Taskbar settings). Fixed.
• Menu items with no title (for example File manage, and Apps / Windows / Task Manager on the taskbar) when shell.nss has no import lang block. A loc.* title that no language file defines now falls back to English, then to a readable name, so a title is never empty. shell -config:init adds the localization block to an older shell.nss (the original is kept as shell.nss.old), and shell -config:check <file> -titles:<context> lists the evaluated titles.
• Installer: installing a build of the same version over another (for example beta.2 over beta.1) now upgrades it and replaces shell.exe, shell.dll and the app instead of keeping the old files.
• shell.log is written to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Nilesoft\Shell when the program folder isn't writable, so errors are visible again.
• First-run setup: the Pick a look step works (Auto, Modern, Classic, White, Black), and it no longer offers a per-user registration on top of an all-users one.
• One app: a single Start menu entry, Nilesoft Shell Pro (NilesoftShellPro.exe); the separate Nilesoft Shell Settings entry is gone.
• The submenu-delay switch can turn off the shipped delay; links to a config line jump to that line; folder icons are visible in the dark theme; picking the saved value no longer counts as a change.

Install

Download	For	Notes
setup-x64.msi	Windows x64	Per-machine install to C:\Program Files\Nilesoft Shell. Needs administrator rights once. Includes the app.
setup-arm64.msi	Windows on ARM	As above; the app is the x64 build and runs under emulation.
setup-x86.msi	32-bit Windows	No app; the Start menu entry opens shell.exe.
NilesoftShellPro-2.0.0-x64-portable.zip	Windows x64, one user	No administrator rights. Extract to e.g. %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\NilesoftShellPro, then run NilesoftShellPro.exe, or shell.exe -register -user -treat and shell.exe -restart. See PORTABLE.txt in the zip.

The MSI upgrades an earlier Nilesoft Shell Pro installation in place (same folder, your shell.nss is kept) and appears as "Nilesoft Shell Pro" in Installed apps. It does not reliably replace the original Nilesoft Shell: uninstall that first (see the warning above).

Verify downloads against SHA256SUMS.txt:

Get-FileHash .\setup-x64.msi -Algorithm SHA256

Unsigned binaries

The MSIs, shell.exe, shell.dll and NilesoftShellPro.exe are not code-signed. Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC" when you run the installer or NilesoftShellPro.exe; choose More info, then Run anyway, if you trust this release. Check the SHA-256 hash first.

Report problems at https://github.com/Abdullah-Masood-05/Shell/issues and include the output of shell.exe -status. Questions and ideas are welcome in Discussions.

Credits

Nilesoft Shell is created by Moudey and Nilesoft and released under the MIT License. Many fixes were ported, with credit in each commit, from the opj161, TCNOco, arvaidasre, iMAboud and iGerman00 forks and from pull requests to Nilesoft Shell by YESNLars, haoze-evolluling, xiaobsh, denismattos, v4806, jtabox, loliri and MissinLinkk05551.