Menu Show Delay Time

How to Speed up Menu Show Delay Time in XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8​

   Information

This will show you how to change the amount of time it takes for a menu to pop, fade, or slide open when you hover the mouse pointer over it in XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8.

This setting will only affect the user account that you are currently logged on to.

   Tip

The Fade or slide menus into view and Fade out menu items after clicking Visual Effects options will also affect how fast menus open and close. Unchecking these options will help speed it up in addition to doing the steps in this tutorial below.

   Warning

If you set the MouseHoverTime setting, then it may override the MenuShowDelay setting in this tutorial.

OPTION ONE

To Change the Menu Show Delay Time using a REG File

1. Do step 2 or 3 below for what you would like to do.

2. To Have a Fast Menu Show Time
NOTE: This changes the menu show delay time to 20 milliseconds.
A) Click on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.
Fast_MenuShowDelay.reg


Download


3. To Restore the Default Menu Show Time
NOTE: This changes the menu show delay time back to 400 milliseconds.
A) Click on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.
Default_MenuShowDelay.reg

Download


4. Save the .reg file to your desktop.

5. Double click/tap on the downloaded .reg file to merge it.

5. If prompted, click/tap on Run, Yes (UAC-Windows 7/8) or Continue (UAC-Vista_, Yes, and OK to approve the merge.

6. Log off and log on, or restart the computer to apply the changes.

7. When finished, you can delete the downloaded .reg file if you like.

OPTION TWO

To Change the Menu Show Delay Time in Registry Editor

1. Press the Windows + R keys to open the Run dialog, type regedit, and press Enter.

2. In Registry Editor, navigate to the location below. (see screenshot below)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop


3. In the right pane of the Desktop key, double click/tap on the MenuShowDelay string value to modify it. (see screenshot above)

4. Type in a number between 0 to 4000 (400 is default) for how many milliseconds you want the Menu to wait before it opens. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: The lower the number, the faster the response time. If you use an entry of 0, there is no menu display delay. However it is not recommended to use 0 though since the menus may be hard to navigate through at that speed. 20 is a good number to use.

5. Click/tap on OK to apply. (See screenshot above)

6. Close regedit.

7. Log off and log on, or restart the computer to apply the changes.




That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Turn the Menu Bar On or Off in Windows 7
• How to Set Windows 7 Menus to Open to the Left or Right Side
• How to Change the Mouse Hover Time before Pop-up Displays in Windows 7
• How to Enable or Disable Windows 7 Pop-up Descriptions
• How to Change the Windows 7 Aero Peek Mouse Hover Delay Time to Preview Desktop
• How to Change How Long Windows 7 Notifications Stay Open
• How to Change the Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Live Preview Delay Time
• How to Change Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Previews Display Delay Time

 

[Brink]

Hello Emibel, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Thank you for posting back with your results.

 

[zijincheng]

it doesn't do that for me, the recent programs doesn't open up faster.

 

[Brink]

Zijin,

If you mean this below, then it affected it's speed as well for me. Did you restart the computer afterwards?

 

[zijincheng]

hey brink, that's exactly what i mean, yeah menus pop up faster (eg in internet explorer files, edit, favourites, tools) but not the thing you have in that picture.

thanks for the reply tho

 

[Brink]

As a test, you might create a new administrator account and test out how it works while logged in that account to see if it behaves the same.

 

[emibel]

Just a warning about setting the delay to -1, as I suggested above, for not allowing the sub-menu to pop up until you click it. I found that it crashes Visual Basic 2010 Express whenever you click on any of the menu items. Accordingly I've now set it to a large positive value (20000 for a 20-second delay) and that avoids the problem.

 

[zijincheng]

it still doesn't work

 

[Brink]

Zijincheng, I'm afraid that I'm stomped as well.

 

[zijincheng]

hey brink, does your start menu thing that i'm having problems with, does it pop up as fast as the menus in other programs or slower?

 

[Brink]

Just a touch slower.

 

[blapath]

The registry entry MenuShowDelay works very strangely under the MFC Feature Pack. The value is used for menu closure delay:
We saw on some machines where our application is installed (obviously using Feature Pack) that sub menus are not closing. let's say in a drop down I have 2 entries which are sub menus (S1 and S2) and 10 other (lead menus (M1, M2... M10). When I opened the drop down and the cursor was placed on S1 , the corresponding sub menu is displayed. Now I moved the cursor to a leaf menu (M1..M10) and the sub menu is no closed. When I moved to S2, the submenu display is changed accordingly. But again, moving to a leaf leaves the sub menu open
We saw that this behavior occurs when the MenuShowDelay registry key (at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop) value is zero.
I am not sure how the value got the value. In any case, the value should be used for menu showing delay and not for menu hiding delay. So it seems Feature Pack hooked on a registry key used for something else.

Any ideas?
Thanks in advance! blapath

 

[Brink]

Hello Blapath, and welcome to Seven Foirums.

That is a strange issue. How does it behave if you change the MenuShowDelay value to say 3, or back to the default of 400?

 

[blapath]

In general the registry key value is 400 and menu opening/hiding works normally. The problem occurs when the value is zero. In this case a sub menu opened correctly and immediately, but when i move the cursor to a leaf menu entry, the previously opened (and displayed) sub menu remains to be open. If cursor moves to another sub menu, than the new one is opened. Of course at this point this last sub menu remains open when I move to leaf entry. This opened sub menu remains open, as far as the cursor moves to other leaf entries.
I just tested the case with other values. Here is what I see: when value is small (1 or 10), sub menu appears immediately and closes immediately when cursor moves to a leaf. When value is big (5000), sub menu opens after the defined time and also closes after delay: cursor moved to a sub menu entry; wait 5 sec until sub menu opens; move to another sub menu, then the opened sub menu remains displayed and only after 5 sec the new one is displayed; move to a leaf entry then the opened sub menu remains open 5 sec before it is closed.
I think the delay is sub menu closing is a bug; at least the registry key name indicates only 'opening delay' - but at least it is consistent: the same amount of time waited for opening and for closing. In any case, it seems value zero is handled as a special case, as in this case opening is not delayed, and closing is delayed indefinitely.
I emphases: the problem occurs only for application developed with the MFC Feature Pack. I use Windows 7, the registry key currently is set to 5000 (I didn't reset my host) and menus open and close normally. I opened iTunes, SQL Server Management Studio, Notepad++, FileZilla Client - all of them behaves normally, without any delay in sub menu opening or closing. So it seems Win7 in general doesn't even look at the registry key, but Feature Pack does it (even without restarting the host).

 

[mmmelaney]

Just a warning about setting the delay to -1, as I suggested above, for not allowing the sub-menu to pop up until you click it. I found that it crashes Visual Basic 2010 Express whenever you click on any of the menu items. Accordingly I've now set it to a large positive value (20000 for a 20-second delay) and that avoids the problem.

Thanks for this tip emibel! This was really irritating me. I don't know whether I am a clutz or its my mouse but I can't keep the cursor on the right menu when it auto-opens sub-menus. So making it open faster was even worse. Its probably the fact that I use the mouse on my bed but your tip helped wonderfully.

Thanks again.

 

[Infinite]

While reading this:

"Tip

The Fade or slide menus into view and Fade out menu items after clicking Visual Effects optiond will also affect how fast menus open and close. Unchecking these options will help speed it up in addition to doing the steps in this tutorial below."

 

[Brink]

Oops, corrected. Thank you.

 

[Valmighty]

Hi, what is the different between this and Mouse Hover Time?

I want to slow things like help pop up so i need more time hovering before it pops up.

But i don't want it to slow things like drag and dropping into another background window.
i.e. dragging a Photoshop file from the explorer into THE Photoshop window

 

[Brink]

Hello Valmighty,

Mouser hover time is the delay time, in milliseconds, that the mouse pointer has to stay hovered on a item before tooltip popups display.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1884-mouse-hover-time-change.html

Menu show delay time is the amount of time it takes for a menu to pop, fade, or slide open when you hover the mouse pointer over it.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Moppusan]

This works on Windows 10 too. There should be login sharing between 7, 8 and 10 forums. =/

 

[Brink]

This works on Windows 10 too. There should be login sharing between 7, 8 and 10 forums. =/

Thank you for confirming.

I'm afraid that since they are separate sites, they require separate registration.