And then there are the parts of Windows that never seem to change. One of the most glaring examples is the Font Manager from Windows 3.1, which survived even in the Windows Vista release, which promised to be a major modernization of Windows at the time.  Another longstanding holdout is the Registry Editor, which keeps general operating system settings and configurations of each app and hardware driver on your Windows 10 device.  Over the years, the only thing that has changed about RegEdit.exe has been its icon—until now. There is a subtle, but welcome improvement in the latest release. Let’s give it a quick look.

Quickly Navigate the Windows Registry Using the Address Bar

Navigating the registry can sometimes be confusing and dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing. If you do have to make modifications there, Windows 10 now makes it easy to find just the key or value you want using a new address bar. All you need to do is to paste or type the path then hit Enter. Then, you’ll be immediately taken to that registry key. The Old Way of Navigating the Registry Prior to Windows 10, version 1703, navigating the registry was a bit tedious. Let’s say you wanted to go to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion You had to first locate the key name, expand the key then begin drilling down until you found what you were looking for.

The New Way of Navigating the Registry Starting with version 1703, all you need to do is copy and paste the path to the value into the address bar then hit Enter.

Now, that’s much faster. Like I said, it’s a very subtle tweak. There are still many areas where the Registry Editor could improve. There could be some further functionality added, such as using the Address Bar for universal search, now you are limited to just registry paths. Hopefully, improvements to relics like Registry Editor is a sign of Microsoft intention to modernize other parts of Windows 10 more often. Which parts of Windows 10 do you think are due for some renovation? Let us know in the comments. Comment

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