Microsoft has added a new search box in Windows 11 that appears over the desktop wallpaper in the middle of the screen. You can click on it and search about everything. It’s the same Windows Search experience as you may have already used in the Start menu.

Windows Search is great for searching files, apps, Windows settings, and more. However, the point of purpose for Microsoft to put a Windows Search box in the middle of the Desktop screen is to promote web searches on their own search engine (Bing) and their own web browser (Microsoft Edge).

It only fetches web results from the Bing search engine and in the Edge browser. And you cannot change the default search engine and default browser to show results on, which is annoying. Even though Bing is one of the top search engines out there, it is still not on par with Google as far as accuracy and usability are concerned. Also, more people prefer to use Google Chrome and Firefox than Microsoft Edge browser.

So most users may not have any use for this new desktop search box and might even find it unnecessary clutter on the desktop. If you want to get rid of the desktop search box on Windows 11, here’s how you can do it.

Disabling the Desktop Search Box in Windows 11

The new desktop Search box resides on the home screen of the Windows 11 PC and fetches web results from Bing search.

You can easily disable this feature with two clicks. All you have to do is right-click on any empty area on the desktop, and select the ‘Show search’ option (ticked).

Once disabled, the ‘Show search’ option will be unticked.

After disabling the feature, open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and check if any process associated with the feature is running in the background.

In the Task Manager, locate the process tree named ‘DesktopSearchBoxCentennial…’, then right-click on it and select ‘End task’.

That’s it.