Send A File Path from the Windows Context Menu to App

Here’s an easy way to pass the file path to a console app. I needed a way to right click on a folder or a file, and send the path to a console app, where the app does its thing with the file(s).

To show you what I mean:

When I right-click on “coolbeans” it runs the following console app, which simply displays the path:

The C# app is pretty straightforward. Basically, once you have the file path, you can apply any operations on the file.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
 
namespace dan_rocks
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Console.WriteLine(args[0]);
      Console.ReadLine();
    }
  }
}

So there’s nothing crazy going on in the above sample. You basically just have to add a few entries to the Registry.

If you want to pass a folder path when you right-click on it, and select the option in the context menu, create a new entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Classes/Folder/Shell

If you want to pass in a file, do the following:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell

Let’s pass in the filepath to note.exe:

Do that and you’ll see the following:

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