The Mouse setup. In Windows, there’s the default select click (Left) and the multi-functional (Right). At first, it wasn’t that intuitive how to perform a right-click on the iPad and without it, Windows is almost unusable. Left-Click: self-explanatory. Right-Click: Leave the Left button pressed and it’ll come up. Indeed, many sites prohibit the right-click on images, pretending to protect their content. I think it is illegitimate. Unfortunately, Google Chrome does not have advanced options for what javascript is allowed to do (on the contrary of Konqueror, Opera or firefox). You need to set up right-click behavior with the mouse in System Preferences under the mouse and trackpad options. Then your Magic Trackpad or Mouse will provide a right-click when you click with two fingers (on a trackpad) or on the right-hand side (with the Magic Mouse). The Mouse setup. In Windows, there’s the default select click (Left) and the multi-functional (Right). At first, it wasn’t that intuitive how to perform a right-click on the iPad and without it, Windows is almost unusable. Left-Click: self-explanatory. Right-Click: Leave the Left button pressed and it’ll come up.
We all know what the right click context menu is in Windows and how it works. At it’s best, the menu can be a hugely valuable resource to get certain tasks accomplished more quickly than digging through programs and their settings to do the same thing. But what if this menu is getting in your way for some reason and you want to disable it?
Mouse Right Clicking
Perhaps you or your children are playing games in a browser and keep accidentally right clicking when you don’t want to, or you just don’t want somebody inexperienced to have access to the quick options of renaming or deleting something on the desktop in case they delete something they shouldn’t. Disabling the right click of the mouse might sound like a simple thing, but you can’t just press a button in Windows to turn it off without a piece of 3rd party software or going deeper into the system settings.
Here’s a selection of 5 solutions to enable you to turn off the right click of the mouse so the context menu isn’t called and can’t be triggered by accident.
Right Click Without A Mouse
1. Via the RegistryThere’s a registry entry you can add to disable the mouse right click. This only works on the desktop and Explorer though and doesn’t affect any programs, you can also still right click on the task bar and control the tray programs via right click. This obviously isn’t the best solution around but it does provide a small level of desktop protection over accidentally doing something via the Explorer context menu.
1. Go to Start -> Run or press Win key+R and type Regedit, then hit Enter. Navigate to the following key in the registry:
- HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorer
2. Right click on the Explorer key and select New -> DWORD Value.
3. Give it the name NoViewContextMenu and click OK. Then double click the name and set the value data as 1. Press OK. To set it back again simply set this value back to 0 or right click on the NoViewContextMenu entry and delete it. You will need to log off or reboot for any of these changes to take effect.
Adding the registry tweak above will disable the mouse right click for all users on the computer. If you only want to disable for the currently logged in user, you should navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE:
- HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorer
For ease of use and to save you going into the registry we have created these keys in easy to run .reg files which simply need to be double clicked on.
Disable Right Click for All Users
Re-enable Right Click for All Users
Disable Right Click for Current User Stronghold crusader 2002.
Re-enable Right Click for Current User
Mouse Right Click
2. Kid Key Lock
Kid Key Lock has been mentioned before in our article about Restricting or Disabling Keyboard and Mouse Buttons, but can be setup to only disable the right click function in Windows. Of course if you want, other mouse buttons such as left click, middle click, double click and the scroll wheel can be disabled also. Simply open the program and tick the mouse button boxes you wish to disable and press OK. The program’s little padlock tray icon will flash whenever a locked button is pressed and you can quickly change the locks by left clicking on the tray icon and going to the Locks sub menu.
It would have been more useful if the password option could be used to lock the setup options screen in case you want to stop the user enabling the mouse buttons again, but that option is only of benefit when completely locking the keyboard. If you don’t want any keyboard restrictions make sure to turn the keyboard locks slider in options all the way to the left. There is a portable version and also an ad supported installer version available.
Download Kid Key Lock
3. Using an AutoHotKey script
AutoHotKey is used for creating scripts and macros and can automate a large number of tasks in Windows if you take a bit of time and patience to learn how it works. In its most basic form, AutoHotKey can disable the mouse right click functionality with just 1 line of code, which is:
RButton:: return
That just tells the script to intercept the right mouse button and then do nothing with it. Although the right click is disabled, you can still Shift right click in Windows or to exit the script. With a bit more creativity and know-how you can obviously add other things to the script such as disabling the tray icon, adding a password to turn it on and off etc.
If you want to try it out, here’s a compiled script with just that 1 line.
Download DisableRightMouseClick
4. Mouse Disabler
Mouse Disabler is like a slightly simpler version of Kid Key Lock and just shows the tick box options to disable the left, right and double clicks with a few others you might find useful such as mouse movements and the scroll wheel. The Disable Keyboard Keys option will turn off the most basic keyboard input. Actions are applied as soon as you tick the box and the program doesn’t close to the tray or disappear into the background, but instead simply minimizes to a task bar icon. Even though Mouse Disabler needs installing you can copy its executable and Helper.dll from program files to make it portable. The odd thing is the uninstaller application is 10 times bigger than the utility itself!
Download Mouse Disabler
5. BasicMouse
This is a shareware utility called BasicMouse and BasicBoard, which used to be called BabyMouse, that allows you to easily restrict several functions of the computer mouse and keyboard. The right mouse button can be disabled, all buttons can be set to send left-clicks, mouse clicks can be restricted to a particular area of the screen etc. Recent versions restrict the program to a 30 day trial which costs $7.95 to activate, but older versions only limit some of the features to 5 minutes use and disabling the right click is free to use. Simply run this older program and it will sit in the system tray for as long as you like disabling the mouse right click without needing to touch any of the time limited functions. The downside is it also disables the scroll wheel as well which you might not want.
Download BasicMouse Free Disable Right Click version