REG — Registry

REG The Windows Registry: the settings of the system and of programs, arranged in keys and values.

Browse

At the root, the five hives: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, HKEY_USERS and HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG. Keys open like folders; a key’s values are its rows, with their name, their type — REG_SZ, REG_DWORD… — and their data, as in the Registry Editor. The unnamed value shows as “(Default)”.

Copy path gives HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\…, just as the Registry Editor’s address bar reads it back. The Registry Editor itself stays within reach, in the button’s menu.

The module only exists on Windows.

Edit

Double-clicking a value, or Enter on it, opens it in its dialog, which follows its type:

• a string, or an expandable string, whose %VARIABLES% are expanded when read;
• multiple strings, one per line;
• a 32- or 64-bit value, in hexadecimal or decimal;
• a binary value, in hexadecimal bytes — and any type the dialog does not know, which keeps its own.

Insert creates a value in the open key, Shift+Insert a key; F2 renames a key or a value; Del deletes, after naming what is going. A key goes with its subkeys and its values, and nothing goes through the Recycle Bin: export first whatever you might want to put back.

What Windows refuses — HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, most often — is asked again with administrator rights, once for the whole selection.

Export, import

Dragging a key to a file panel, or copying it to the other panel with F6, writes a .reg file — one per key, subkeys included, in the Registry Editor’s format. Selected values go together into a single file, whose name is asked for.

Conversely, a .reg file dropped onto the Registry is imported into it, after confirmation: it writes to the locations it specifies, whatever key is open, and a file that cannot be read in full is not applied at all.

Meneaufile manual, in English.