MenuChoice

MenuChoice is a USD 15 shareware control panel by Kerry Clendinning which enabled hierarchical menus in the Apple menu before System 7.5. In System 7.5, this functionality was incorporated into the Macintosh system software by Apple Computer.

In system versions 7.5 and later, the options used to set up and configure hierarchical menus in the Apple menu are now handled by the Apple Menu Options control panel.

Options
Apart from just activating hierarchical menus inside the Apple Menu, MenuChoice does more. It lets the user bypass the Macintosh system software's default limit of five levels of hierarchical menus by using the Deeper menus option. To do that, the user presses the shift key as the fifth menu level is approached. The Apple menu then shows a Deeper menu, and the user can delve deeper from there.

There is also the possibility to display the entire contents of the Desktop inside the Apple menu. The user can activate the Desktop menu option, which will display a Desktop submenu near the top of the Apple Menu.

Aliases for any items can be created and then be filed into the Apple Menu Items folder automatically. To do this, the Aliases option in the control panel needs to be activated. The option key must be depressed when the item is selected for an alias to be created.

Folders in submenus can either be placed at the top, bottom or be mixed with other items inside the folder. (The mixed, or intermixed option, is the default, irreversible setting with Apple's control panel as of System 7.5.) This setting, too, can be changed in the control panel.

Recent Items
When Apple integrated the options of MenuChoice, the option to display recent items, too, came along for the ride. MenuChoice displays only the ten most recent items, cleared every time the system is restarted. Apple made this better by splitting the options so that individual recent item submenus can be created for applications, documents and servers, and allowed the user to individually specify the number of items (maximum) every of these submenus could hold.

Backward compatibility
MenuChoice still works perfectly -- even under versions of Mac OS 9, despite the last update occurring in 1994. However, Mac OS X made it fully unfunctional. There is no Mac OS X version of MenuChoice.