Windows 10 Registry Editor Gets Very Welcome Address Bar

Registry Editor - Address Bar

Sure, there was some good stuff announced as part of today’s release of Windows 10 Insider Preview build 14942 to Fast ring testers. But the best news is that the Registry Editor got a new Address Bar. And it’s awesome.

The Registry Editor, the tool built into Windows to view, search for, and change settings in your system registry, hasn’t changed much since Windows 95. But, for some reason or another, we constantly find ourselves in there on an almost daily basis to tweak some knob, pull some lever, or apply some Band-Aid fix.

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So I have no doubt you’ll be super excited to discover Microsoft has updated the tool to now have an Address Bar, allowing navigation of the registry tree similar to how you navigate the web. It accepts keyboard input in the form absolute paths, so gone are the days where you click those tiny arrows with the mouse or use mash the arrow keys on the keyboard — down, right, down, right, down, right, down, right, down, right, oh crap I went too far, left, up, … you get the idea. (Okay, maybe the real pros use the command line reg.exe tool instead.)

Need to reconfigure your Just-In-Time debug options? Just copy and paste HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug and bam, you’re there. Found a cool undocumented registry value you want to share with others? Just navigate there and copy what’s in the address bar. No more File – Export trickery needed.

I believe I speak for most IT professionals and developers out there: Thank you, Microsoft.

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Conversation 25 comments

  • 5038

    07 October, 2016 - 3:07 pm

    <p>&nbsp;First they made the command prompt awesome back in 1507, now this??&nbsp;Must be a dream!</p>

  • 1001

    07 October, 2016 - 1:31 pm

    <p>Finally! Until now, navigating the Registor Editor really was a pain in the….</p>

  • 1548

    Premium Member
    07 October, 2016 - 1:35 pm

    <p>haha… YES</p>
    <p>Thank you Rafael and thank you Microsoft.&nbsp;&nbsp;I felt odd getting all happy for something like this but it’s pretty much gone by the time I started typing.</p>

  • 2944

    Premium Member
    07 October, 2016 - 1:39 pm

    <p>Holy crap, this has been needed for like 20 years. Good stuff!</p>

  • 5027

    07 October, 2016 - 1:48 pm

    <p>excellent news, best update to a software in a long time :)</p>
    <p>&nbsp;</p>

  • 172

    Premium Member
    07 October, 2016 - 1:59 pm

    <p>It’s the simple little things that make&nbsp;things great!<br />THANK YOU Microsoft&nbsp;</p>

  • 6234

    07 October, 2016 - 2:10 pm

    <p>I mean that’s nice but in reality it should just be part of Windows Explorer so if I type a regedit path in their it will take me to the registry. &nbsp;The registry icon should show up under My Computer as well (hidden from non technical users by default). &nbsp;</p>

    • 5592

      07 October, 2016 - 3:58 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#19509">In reply to Eric_Malamisura:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>One of the nice things about powershell is that it treats the registry the same way it treats the file system. They’re both just hierarchical lists and you can use the same tools and commands against both of them.</p>
      <p>&nbsp;</p>

  • 4010

    07 October, 2016 - 3:32 pm

    <p>This is a very welcome addition to the overall registry editing experience. It looks delightful.</p>

  • 5592

    07 October, 2016 - 4:01 pm

    <p>I have to wonder how many people use the registry editor "on an almost daily basis". I’m a fairly sophisticated user (with some books on Windows that sold quite well to justify that boast) and I use it maybe once a month. <br /><br />Nice to see the address bar, though.&nbsp;Every little enhancement to poweruser tools is welcome.</p>

  • 5592

    07 October, 2016 - 4:02 pm

    But on a VERY happy note. Congratulations to the Thurrott.com dev team for getting the “Edit” command implemented. It’s VERY much appreciated.

    • 5530

      09 October, 2016 - 1:22 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#19540">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>wait, there’s a edit function? where? I don’t see it…</p>

      • 5592

        09 October, 2016 - 11:54 am

        In reply to FalseAgent:

        Well, it was there for a while and now it’s gone. Guess it was too buggy. (on Edit: yes, edit. Apparently it still is there for a period of time after you create and post the message)  

  • 124

    Premium Member
    07 October, 2016 - 5:43 pm

    It would be nice if they made it a bread crumb thingy.  Then you could just click to go back in the path. Just sayin’.
     
    OMG just saw the edit show up in the comments! A Two fer Day.

    • 2525

      Premium Member
      07 October, 2016 - 11:50 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#19571">In reply to lwetzel:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>Agreed. What Explorer has works really well</p>

  • 556

    Premium Member
    07 October, 2016 - 9:22 pm

    <p>WOW WOW WO 20 years later finally&nbsp;</p>

  • 397

    08 October, 2016 - 1:14 am

    …..font is smaller too.  Great stuff

  • 2015

    08 October, 2016 - 5:15 am

    <p>OMG! Freaking awesome!</p>

  • 442

    08 October, 2016 - 11:17 am

    <p>The Control Panel is no longer reachable from the context menu on the start buttom :(</p>

  • 4094

    10 October, 2016 - 9:40 pm

    <p>Are you kidding… after 20+ years they finally update RegEdit. &nbsp; And&nbsp;all they do is put an address bar in it. &nbsp; Go get a copy of Registry Workshop. &nbsp;I stopped using RegEdit years ago.</p>

  • 1775

    11 October, 2016 - 9:37 am

    <p>I’ve never felt the need for an address bar.&nbsp; What I’d like to see is a confirmation in the "Searching" dialog box.&nbsp; As is, there’s no way to be sure what you entered was correct.&nbsp; May not sound like much, until you have to deal with a large registry on a slow system.</p>

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