• Don’t want search?

    Now I will be the first to admit that I search.  I search on Google.  I search even on Bing. But when I search – I WANT TO SEARCH. So I’ve never quite understood why Microsoft has this thing about having the Operating system search from the taskbar.  I open a browser.

    Now I do use the search box to quickly jump to a setting. If you hop back and forth between Windows 10 and 11 sometimes the brain goes… where did they move that again?

    So now we have Bing being added to search in the March updates.. but not just ANY search … it’s the chatgpt search.

    Now I’m not adverse to change but really…. do we really need all of this ChatGPT stuff given that it feels very much to me that it’s a bit too new, too much the shiny thing and hasn’t been tested for security issues, side effects and what not?

    Joe here posts about the registry key to disable or hide the search bar. You can find this by opening up the registry and

    find: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search

    Look for SearchboxTaskbarMode and right-click on it and select Modify.  Change it to 0

    I’d argue that you want it t0 search your computer, but not the web. For this you’ll add a new registry key for DisableSearchBoxSuggestions

    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer]
    “DisableSearchBoxSuggestions”=dword:00000001

    And let’s not forget about chatgpt coming to Microsoft 365 Copilot. Stay tuned, we’ll have lots more guidance and advice on how to navigate all of these vendors “rush to the AI” trend. And how to turn some of these settings off….