PowerSymlink - Creates Symlinks from Context Menu ("mklink /D")

Please add a PowerToy to create Symlinks from the Windows Explorer context menu.

For web projects, I often have to create symlinks (using mklink /D) from the command line. Having this feature in the Windows Explorer context menu will be a great time-saver.

The context menu should have two entries for this new PowerToy:

1. Only, if folder/file is selected - Context menu shows “PowerSymlink - link to …”

• (Idea: Maybe it’s possible here to use the a modified version of the existing Windows “Create new Shortcut” feature.)
• The click opens a popup with title “Set Symlink destination name”.
• This popup contains a text field for the Symlink destination filename, a folder selector button, and a confirm button.

1. Context menu shows “PowerSymlink - create new” (visible with or without selection)

• Implementation like the existing Windows “Create new Shortcut” functionality (See screenshot)
• If folder is selected, this folder is automatically set in the popup.

The following command is used by me normally to created symlinks on the command-line. The context menu entry for symlinks will also help to make less mistakes while creating symlinks for sure.

mklink /D "C:\Users\username\Local Sites\__CHANGE-PROJECT-NAME__\app\public\wp-content\plugins\__CHANGE-PLUGIN-FOLDER-NAME__" "C:\Users\username\Local Sites - Shared Project Data\plugins\__CHANGE-PLUGIN-FOLDER-NAME__"

More ideas:

• Popup: It should be possible to direct copy and paste of the complete path including not yet existing filename in the text field. If the file does not exits, a confirm popup asks, if you really want to create this Symlink destination.

[TheChilliPL]

There’s a tool for Windows called LinkShellExtension and it works quite well for that

[SvenBudak]

maybe it is even the easiest thing to do, if you can convert a folder link into a symlink by right clicking on it.