Nilesoft Shell Pro 2.0.0-beta.2

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.

Nilesoft Shell Pro 2.0.0-beta.2 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.

Documentation: https://abdullah-masood-05.github.io/Shell/ (see About this fork for the full list of changes).

Fixed since 2.0.0-beta.1

• 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.

Highlights

Security

• Registration no longer widens the access rights on the program folder or gives the Users group full control of the Windows 11 context-menu CLSID key. scripts/repair-treatas-acl.ps1 repairs machines where an earlier build already did.
• Windows' own DLLs are no longer loaded through the DLL search path; shell.dll and shell.exe are built with Control Flow Guard.

Stability and menu fixes

• COM is no longer initialised from DllMain; import nesting is bounded, so a self-importing config can't crash Explorer.
• The configuration reloads when shell.nss or any import changes, and a broken config is retried once it has been saved again.
• Fixes for COM reference counting, registry and UTF-8 handling, path buffers, duplicate removal, orphan separators, lazily filled system submenus (Send to, New), negative monitor coordinates and per-window DPI.
• Shell no longer changes your selection-fade setting or Explorer's working directory. The submenu delay is one visible line in shell.nss (showdelay = 200), and the app can turn it off.

Per-user mode (no admin)

• shell -register -user [-treat] registers under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, including the Windows 11 classic-menu redirect.
• %APPDATA%\Nilesoft\Shell\shell.nss is used when it exists (shell -config:init creates it).
• -restart restarts Explorer for the current session only; -status and -config:check report the state as JSON.

The Nilesoft Shell Pro app (NilesoftShellPro.exe, new)

• The one Start menu entry, Nilesoft Shell Pro; double-clicking shell.exe opens it too. Checks the installation, enables Shell for you or for all users, edits the configuration and restores backups. A single self-contained exe: no runtime DLLs and no VC++ Redistributable.

Setup

• Upgrading no longer deletes your shell.nss; all language files are installed and picked from your Windows locale.
• New default menus (Develop, Copy, New file, System) from imports/develop.nss and imports/my-tools.nss.

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-beta.2-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 uses the same upgrade code as Nilesoft Shell, so it upgrades an existing Nilesoft Shell installation in place (same folder, your shell.nss is kept). It appears as "Nilesoft Shell Pro" in Installed apps. Installing a later upstream Nilesoft Shell release over it replaces it the same way.

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.

Known limitations / not yet field-tested

Be careful with this build on a machine you depend on.

• Per-user registration (-register -user) is covered by our own testing of the registry it writes, but has not yet been exercised by us in a live Explorer session across sign-out / sign-in and multiple users.
• The Windows 11 per-user TreatAs redirect (-register -user -treat, the classic menu for one user) has not been exercised in a live Windows 11 Explorer by us. If the modern menu stays, register for all users with the MSI instead.
• Automatic config reload (when shell.nss or an import changes) has not been exercised in a live Explorer by us; if a change doesn't show, run shell.exe -restart.
• The app is new: treat it as a preview. It snapshots the configuration to %APPDATA%\Nilesoft\Shell\backups before every save.
• If both the MSI (all users) and a per-user registration exist, the per-user one wins for that user.
• NilesoftShellPro.exe is x64 only; there is no 32-bit build of the app.

Known issues / upgrading from a manual install

If Nilesoft Shell was installed by hand before (for example copied to C:\Windows\nilesoft and registered from there), 2.0.0-beta.1 left one of the old registrations in place: the folder-extensions class {BAE3934B-8A6A-4BFB-81BD-3FC599A1BAF3} kept pointing at the old shell.dll. Explorer then loads both DLLs and right-click shows no menu at all, even though shell.exe -status reports Shell as registered.

• This release repairs it during setup. The MSI runs shell.exe -register, which now repoints or removes every Shell CLSID (context menu, icon overlay, folder extensions) that names a different shell.dll, and logs each repair. -unregister removes all three and their FolderExtensions / overlay entries. The old files are not deleted; they just stop being registered. Restart Explorer (or sign out and back in) afterwards so the old DLL is unloaded.
• Already affected? Run scripts\repair-stale-registration.ps1 to see what is stale, then the same with -Fix from an elevated PowerShell (-Fix -WhatIf previews), and restart Explorer.
• shell.exe -status now lists stale registrations under "conflicts", the Nilesoft shell.dll files loaded in Explorer under "loadedInExplorer", and the log file under "log".
• A second copy of shell.dll in the same process no longer installs its hooks a second time; it logs a warning instead. (An old upstream DLL loaded first keeps the menu until the registration is repaired.)
• shell.dll installed in Program Files cannot write shell.log next to itself from Explorer, so it now logs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Nilesoft\Shell\shell.log. The app reads that file.

Report problems at https://github.com/Abdullah-Masood-05/Shell/issues and include the output of shell.exe -status.

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 and iMAboud forks.