Nilesoft Shell Pro 2.0.5

Nilesoft Shell Pro 2.0.5 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 2.0.5

This release fixes bugs reported on the original Nilesoft Shell. Each item names the upstream issue or pull request (moudey/Shell#123).

Menus

• On Windows in a language other than English, items that Shell moves into File manage, Pin/Unpin and Terminal (for example Windows' Copy as path) no longer disappear. Pin and unpin items are matched by id instead of by their English title. (moudey#477, PR moudey#843)
• File manage > New creates the folder or file in the folder you right-clicked again. Since 2.0.0 it used Explorer's own working folder.
• Repeated Eject entries stay in the Safely Remove Hardware tray menu. (moudey#583)
• Terminal and Develop items are hidden on Library folders, where they could not open. (moudey#688, moudey#385)
• File manage > Take ownership makes the signed-in user the owner instead of the administrator account that approved the prompt. (moudey#690)
• Long menu item titles are no longer cut at 259 characters.
• Commands started from the menu get their own COM apartment and start synchronously, which fixes items that sometimes did nothing.
• On Windows 11, menus with blur or acrylic get the system's smooth rounded corners. (moudey#141)
• Clicking an item no longer leaves a black block where the item was. Windows fades the clicked item out from a copy of it, which came out black; Shell switches that fade off for the one click again, as the original did.

Configuration language

• The documented default item property works: the item is drawn bold. (moudey#188)
• theme.font.quality sets the text antialiasing, including ClearType for opaque menus. (moudey#776)
• io.delete(path, true) deletes a folder with its contents; links inside it are removed without following them. (moudey#788)
• io.file.write, create and append write characters above U+7FFF (most Chinese, Japanese and Korean text, and emoji) correctly. (moudey#786)
• type = '...' and clsid = '...' accept spaces around = in modify(...). (moudey#708)
• clipboard.is_empty returns 1 when the clipboard has no text. (moudey#515)
• sys.temp returns the system temporary folder; user.temp stays the user's. (moudey#508)
• New ids for the rename box menu, and id.play_with_windows_media_player matches again. (moudey#248)

Languages

• Dutch (nl.nss), contributed by YESNLars. (PR moudey#832)
• Go to > Folder titles are translated, and every language file has the keys added in this fork. (moudey#726)
• Hong Kong and Macau use Traditional Chinese; other Chinese locales use Simplified Chinese. Fixes in the Traditional Chinese and Korean files.

Under the hood

• shell.log can be read while Explorer has it open, and two threads can no longer open it at once. (moudey#715)
• The program manifest is valid, so its DPI, long path and UTF-8 settings take effect.
• Registry string values are written with their terminator.

Documentation

• Corrections to the import syntax, sys.datetime ("Y" and "y"), sel.path.name and sel.path.title, the selection modes, io.file.create, and what Ctrl+Win does. (moudey#541, moudey#787, moudey#812, moudey#395, moudey#352, PR moudey#831, PR moudey#837)

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-2.0.5-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.