Disable ALL CAPS menu items in Visual Studio 2013

In Visual Studio 2013, Microsoft again presents the menu in UPPERCASE as the default.

Can these be modified to be Sentence Case?


Solution 1:

Yes - in the new Visual Studio 2013 (as in VS 2012), MS reinforced their design decision to make ALL CAPS MENU ITEMS the default. The methods for reverting the menu style are almost the same methods used for Visual Studio 2012, which has been discussed before.


Update (after Visual Studio 2013 Update 4)

As of Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 you can go into Tools > Options > Environment
and uncheck Turn off upper case in the menu bar screenshot of the menu


Before Visual Studio 2013 Update 4:

You need to create a specific registry key if you want "old-style" menus back.


First Variant: Since Package Manager Console is Powershell, select menu options TOOLS / Library Package Manager / Package Manager Console and enter and run

Set-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\General -Name SuppressUppercaseConversion -Type DWord -Value 1 (as a single line).


Second Variant: Open up a Command Prompt (win+r, cmd, enter) and enter and run

REG ADD HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\General /v SuppressUppercaseConversion /t REG_DWORD /d 1 (as a single line).


Third Variant: Change registry values by hand, open regedit and navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\General

then, create (right click):

 DWORD value

with the content of

 SuppressUppercaseConversion

and set it to

 1

Close regedit.exe and you're done.


Fourth Variant: At least one VS Extension (VSCommands for Visual Studio 2013) has been published that enables you (among other things) to switch menu style via config menu from within VS 2013.

You may also set it to all-lower-case items (which is, imho, nice): enter image description here

switch to Sentence Case (subtly different from what you get with SuppressUppercaseConversion: the SQL menu gets renamed to Sql) enter image description here

or hide it completely (and have it appear on ALT key press or mouse over) enter image description here

Solution 2:

After years Microsoft has changed their mind on this feature. As of Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 RC, an option has been added in Tools -> Options to change to Mixed Case for Menu titles. Obviously this is not for VS 2012 but going forward this option will be there.

Here is the notification from Brian Harry of Microsoft....

Mixed Case Menus – I know I’m going to get some feedback on this one :) This is a long standing request by a vocal portion of the VS user base since VS 2012 to change the “ALL CAPS” menus. In VS 2013 Update 3, we have added a Tools –> Options setting to control whether you see ALL CAPS or Mixed Case. The default is still ALL CAPS but, if you change it, it will persist across upgrades and will roam across your IDE instances using the VS Online roaming settings feature (if you log into VS so it knows who you are).

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2014/07/02/vs-tfs-2013-3-update-3-rc.aspx