How to Turn Off Shortcut Name Extensions in Windows 10 & 11

By Timothy Tibbetts

Anytime you create a shortcut, you have to look at - Shortcut added the extension. In this tutorial, we're going to make sure that any shortcuts you create in the future no longer have the Shortcut extension.

Video tutorial:

Here's a before and after screenshot:

We're going to make two registry changes and restart File Explorer, so it's easiest to use a batch file.

Download Turn Off Shortcut Name Extensions in Windows from MajorGeeks and extract the two files:

Turn Off Shortcut Name Extensions.bat
Turn On Shortcut Name Extensions.bat (Default)

Right-click on Turn Off Shortcut Name Extensions.bat or Turn On Shortcut Name Extensions.bat and click Run as Administrator.

Click Yes when prompted by User Account Control.

Create a new shortcut and check it out!

This tweak is included as part of MajorGeeks Windows Tweaks.