Pin any file to Windows 10 Start Screen (Registry Tweak)

Windows 10 lets you Pin folders, apps and shortcuts to executable files to the Start screen using the “Pin to Start” context menu. Using a registry tweak discussed in this post, you can pin any file (of any type) to the Start screen in Windows 10.

Registry Tweak to allow Pinning any file to the Start screen

Start Regedit.exe and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFileSystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers

Create a subkey named {470C0EBD-5D73-4d58-9CED-E91E22E23282}

Selecting the key {470C0EBD-5D73-4d58-9CED-E91E22E23282}, double-click the (default) value in the right-pane, and type “Pin to Start”. This step is optional, though.

Exit the Registry Editor.

Now, to pin a file, first create a shortcut to that file, right-click on the shortcut and click Pin to Start.

The data file (in this case, .txt file type) gets pinned to the Start screen. The same method works for any other file type. And, the desktop shortcut can now be deleted. For website shortcut (.URL) files, you can pin them straight away from the right-click menu, as they’re shortcuts already.

REG file

To automate the above registry edit, copy the following lines to Notepad and save the file with .REG extension.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFileSystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\{470C0EBD-5D73-4d58-9CED-E91E22E23282}]
@="Pin to Start"

If you don’t have administrator rights in your system, you can apply the tweak for your user account only using the following REG file/contents.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\AllFileSystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\{470C0EBD-5D73-4d58-9CED-E91E22E23282}]
@="Pin to Start"

Double-click the REG file to apply the contents to the registry.