Most of the time, you won't need the TortoiseSVN context menu, apart for folders that are under version control by Subversion. For non- versioned folders, you only really need the context menu when you want to do a checkout. If you check the option Hide menus for unversioned paths , TortoiseSVN will not add its entries to the context menu for unversioned folders. But the entries are added for all items and paths in a versioned folder. And you can get the entries back for unversioned folders by holding the Shift key down while showing the context menu.