However, whenever you create a shortcut on your desktop, Windows will automatically assign the -shortcut keyword at the end of that file name. The reason on their part is pretty simple- it will help the user in remembering that it is a shortcut file and not the actual EXE. While that is completely understandable, some users just want to keep things simple. Hence they usually remove this tag from the end of the file name.
However, manually doing so every time you create a shortcut might prove to be quite an effort-taking task. Therefore, a much better approach will be to stop Windows 11 from adding the shortcut text in the shortcut file’s name. Or, you could also modify this shortcut keyword and add any other word of your choice on its behalf. In this regard, this guide will show you how to carry out both these tasks. Follow along.
Stop Windows 11 from Adding the Shortcut Text in File Name
Before trying out the below steps, it is recommended to take a backup of your registry files. Once that is done, you may then proceed with the instructions:
How to Replace the Shortcut Text with any Other Word
Rather than taking the extreme approach of removing the ‘shortcut’ keyword, you could also instruct Windows to replace it with any other keyword of your choice. To do so, you just need to change the value of ShortcutNameTemplate. By default, its value is: Herein the %s denotes the filename and the .ink could be considered as a file extension. And the text in between is the one that you get after creating the shortcut file. In the above example, it is -Shortcut, hence you get a hyphen and the Shortcut text after the name of every shortcut file. [This is why to stop Windows 11 from adding the shortcut text in the shortcut file’s name, we had removed the -Shortcut tag from the registry value]. Now comes how could you customize this value. Well, just replace the -Shortcut keyword from the above command with one of your choices. For example, if you wish to have the ‘Short’ keyword at the end of every shortcut file, then change the registry value of ShortcutNameTemplate to: On the other hand, to add it before the file name, just add that word before the %s. For example:
How to Revert to Default Shortcut Naming
If you wish to revert to the default naming scheme (i.e. allow Windows to add the -Shortcut tag at the end of every shortcut file), then there are a couple of methods that you could opt for, namely:
If you had manually created the NamingTemplates key under Explorer, then just delete it and everything will be back to normal. On the other hand, if your Registry already had the NamingTemplates and ShortcutNameTemplate keys, then change the value of ShortcutNameTemplate to “%s – Shortcut.lnk” [double inverted quotes are mandatory].
That’s it. These were the steps to stop Windows 11 from adding the shortcut text in the shortcut file’s name. If you have any queries concerning the aforementioned steps, do let us know in the comments. We will get back to you with a solution at the earliest.
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