C.3. Disable context menu entries

TortoiseGit allows you to disable (actually, hide) context menu entries. Since this is a feature which should not be used lightly but only if there is a compelling reason, there is no GUI for this and it has to be done directly in the registry. This can be used to disable certain commands for users who should not use them. But please note that only the context menu entries in the explorer are hidden, and the commands are still available through other means, e.g. the command line or even other dialogs in TortoiseGit itself!

The registry keys which hold the information on which context menus to show are HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TortoiseGit\ContextMenuEntriesMaskLow and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TortoiseGit\ContextMenuEntriesMaskHigh.

Each of these registry entries is a DWORD value, with each bit corresponding to a specific menu entry. A set bit means the corresponding menu entry is deactivated.

Example: to disable the “Sendmail” the “Rebase” and the “Settings” menu entries, add the values assigned to the entries like this:

  0x0000000000000100
+ 0x0000080000000000
+ 0x2000000000000000
= 0x2000080000000100

The lower DWORD value (0x00000100) must then be stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TortoiseGit\ContextMenuEntriesMaskLow, the higher DWORD value (0x20000800) in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TortoiseGit\ContextMenuEntriesMaskHigh.

To enable the menu entries again, simply delete the two registry keys.