Set to 0 the following keys (add them if needed)
- BingSearchEnabled (DWORD)
- CortanaConsent (DWORD)
I've been running w/ those since Windows 1903, and that's why I don't care about all those Edge shenanigans (except the default browser switcher).
All those sub-par web experiences in the Windows Shell are tiresome. Taskbar search breaking because of internet issues tops it all off nicely.
MS documented the change here, very buried:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica...
Look under "Feature deprecations and removals" > "Search Results from the Internet" and you see:
"Windows 11 does not support disabling the return of internet Search results via Registry Key."
They imply there that you can still use Group Policy to make this change, but... that doesn't work either in the latest builds.
And you're right, the keys I mentioned don't seem to work anymore.
There's a policy called "Don't search the web or display web results in Search", which doesn't seem to work. Perhaps it requires Windows to be domain-joined?
Or perhaps they were referencing the "Turn off display of recent search entries in the File Explorer search box" policy, in which case it works. The description for that policy doesn't mention web results at all, which is odd. Anyway, you will have to kill SearchHost.exe for the policy to take effect, it will be launched automatically when initiating a new search.
Used to be that Windows users would complain that Linux made them edit arcane config files, I guess now it's Linux users that complain about Windows needing you to edit arcane registry settings.