Windows Search

Windows Search helps you search for documents and other files on your Windows 11 PC and in your cloud storage services, quickly find apps and settings on your PC, and search the web, all from a single interface. Windows Search is integrated into the Taskbar and Start, but it also powers file and folder search in File Explorer and settings search in the Settings app. And all these interfaces are enhanced with new capabilities powered by local AI models if you have a Copilot+ PC.

Defaults

Windows Search and Search in File Explorer and Settings are mostly straightforward. But there are less obvious features in each, too.

Windows Search defaults

When you first sign in to Windows 11, you will see a Search box on the Taskbar to the right of the Start button.

Start also displays a Search box at the top of its window, but this interface can’t be hidden, moved, or configured in any way.

To display Windows Search, select the Search item in the Taskbar, open Start and select the Search box, or open the Quick link menu and select “Search.”

Tip: If you click the Search box in the Taskbar, you will type your search query there. But if you open Windows Search any other way, you will type the search query in the Search box in that window.

Keyboard shortcut: You can open Windows Search more quickly. Just tap the Windows key on your keyboard and start typing your search. Or, just type Windows key + S to display Windows Search.

Tip: Using Search to search for files, settings, and other things is often called Start Search.

Windows Search displays suggested apps and settings, Search highlights, and other information if you just open it directly. Once you begin typing, you will see buttons for filtering the results to Apps, Documents, Settings, and more at the top, a list of filtered search results with the best match at its top, and options related to the currently selected search result.

Windows Search lets you do the following:

Access recent searches. If you open Windows Search directly and don’t start typing, it will display your recent searches in the results pane. You can remove any item from this list by mousing over it and clicking the “Close” (“X”) button next to it in the list.

Open a search result. When you click a search result, the underlying app, file, setting (in the Settings app), or webpage (in Microsoft Edge) will open. For example, if you search for windows and select Windows Security in the search results under Apps, the Windows Security app opens.

Do more with a search result or recent search. You can see and access additional options related to a search result by mousing-over it and clicking the “Preview” link that appears. When you do, options like “Run as administrator,” “Open file location,” “Pin to Start,” “Pin to taskbar,” “Uninstall” (for apps), and others will appear in the preview pane on the right. You can also access these options by navigating through the results list with the Up and Down arrow keys or by right-clicking a search result.

Filter the search results. When you begin typing a query, a group of buttons–“All,” “Apps,” “Documents,” “Web Settings,” “Folders,and “Photos”–appear at the top of Windows Search so you can filter the results to a specific category. Otherwise, results will appear in categorized groups.

Manage your accounts. You can click your profile picture in the top right of Windows Search to switch between available Microsoft and Microsoft Work or School accounts, if available, or use the “Manage accounts” link to open Settings at Accounts > Your accounts, where you manage those accounts.

Open Search settings. The “Options” (“…”) button reveals a single option, “Search settings,” which opens Search settings (Settings > Privacy & security > Search) when clicked.

File Explorer defaults

The File Explorer app has a prominent Search box in its upper-right with preview text that hints at what you can do. In most views, including the default Home view, the preview text will read Search [this location] on many PCs, or Try describing an image or file if you have a Copilot+ PC because those PCs also support natural language search using an local AI model.

Tip: The preview text can change depending on the view. For example, if you select This PC in the navigation pane, the Search box will read Search This PC.

Keyboard shortcut: You can open File Explorer more quickly by typing Windows key + E.

When you select the Search box, it visibly confirms the selection with an accent color-based highlight on its bottom.

But if you have a Copilot+ PC, the Search box lights up with a colored “AI glow” to indicate that it’s ready to find files in more dramatic ways.

Keyboard shortcut: You can also select the Search box in File Explorer by typing Ctrl + F.

As you type, File Explorer displays a Search Results view with files filtered to the current file system location, sorted by relevance, and displayed in a “Content” layout. The search term you are typing is highlighted in each result, and the app displays “Search options” and “Close search” command bar buttons that are unique to this feature.

Learn more: You can refer to Search for files with File Explorer, below, and the File Explorer chapter for more information.

Settings defaults

The Settings app has long offered basic search capabilities, but this functionality has been significantly enhanced in recent Windows 11 versions, and there is now a prominent Search box centered in the top of the Settings app window for easy access.

On many Windows 11 PCs, this Search box displays “Find a setting” preview text to indicate its use. But if you have a Copilot+ PC, the Search box will display a dynamic hint as its preview text, like “Try ‘My mouse pointer is too small'” to hint at the additional capabilities it provides.

You can of course search for settings using the Search box in the Settings app. As you type, results appear in a drop-down list box, arranged by relevance, and you can click any result to navigate to the appropriate page.

With a Copilot+ PC, however, you will see additional capabilities. For example, you can change many settings directly inline in the search results as shown here.

You can also use natural language search, which works with a local AI model on your PC, to find settings when you don’t know the name of the setting. The hint noted above, “My mouse pointer is too small,” is a good example. You could search for small, but no mouse pointer results would appear. You could also search for mouse pointer, but then you would have to locate “Mouse pointer size” in the results. But searching for My mouse pointer is too small provides exactly the options you need, and you can make the change inline without having to navigate to another page in the app.

Customize Windows Search

Windows Search is configured in the Settings app at Privacy & security > Search.

Key options to consider here include:

Show search highlights. Much of the Windows Search interface is taken up by a feature called Search highlights that exists solely to distract you into clicking on one of its links, which forces you to use Microsoft Edge even if you chose a different default web browser and access Microsoft websites like Bing or MSN that are monetized using Microsoft’s advertising services. You can disable this waste of space by toggling this option to “Off.” When you do so, Windows Search presents a much cleaner interface. Eventually: It sometimes takes a few minutes for this change to take effect.

Tip: If the Search box is visible on the Taskbar, hiding Search highlights also removes the graphical “content suggestion” that it typically displays, too.

Tip: I recommend hiding Search highlights.

Search my accounts. This curious option lets Windows Search surface results from apps and services you sign into with your Microsoft account (and/or Microsoft Work or School account) in addition to its other result types. This can include Outlook, Bing, and any other offerings that integrate with Windows Search.

Tip: If you use Microsoft Outlook, you may want to leave this enabled so you can see results from your email or schedule. Otherwise, I recommended disabling this feature.

Search the contents of online files. By default, Windows Search will look for files stored in OneDrive or other compatible apps tied to cloud storage services that you installed in Windows and then surface those files in its search results. This helps Windows Search find files you’ve not synced locally to your PC using OneDrive’s Files on Demand feature (or the equivalent in other services).

Find my files. By default, Windows Search will look for files stored locally on your PC in your Desktop, Documents, Music, and Pictures folders only. This is the right configuration for most people, and you click the small “Customize search locations” link to modify the search locations using the old-school Indexing Options control panel if needed. Or, you can click “Enhanced,” which I do not recommend, and force Windows Search to index and then search your PC’s entire storage, minus the customizable list of excluded folders shown below that.

Tip: Remember that the “Search my accounts” and “Search the contents of online files” options described above let Windows Search also find files and other content elsewhere, including locations (like those in OneDrive) that may be visible and accessible on your PC as well.

Personalize Windows Search on the taskbar. Windows 11 displays a Search box on the Taskbar by default, but you can configure this to be a Search icon with a label, a Search icon, or to be hidden entirely. If you click this link, Settings will navigate to Personalization > Taskbar, where you can configure this item.

Tip: I strongly recommend just hiding the Search item on the Taskbar because it’s just taking up space and you can easily access Windows Search with its Windows key + S keyboard shortcut any time time.

Advanced indexing options. Windows Search uses an on-disk database called an index to provide search results more quickly. When you first sign in to Windows 11, it begins indexing the configured file locations, and it will run in the background as needed to keep the index up-to-date. There’s little reason to micromanage this, but you can click this option to launch the Indexing Options control panel and arbitrarily add, remove, or otherwise customize which file locations Windows Search indexes and searches.

Tip: I do not recommend doing this. Windows Search handles local file searches correctly for most people, and it’s optimized for performance and battery life.

More info: The Search settings page displays the indexing status (which will be either “In progress” or “Done”), the number of files it has indexed, and the number of files remaining to be indexed at the top. It will only index the disk when you’re not using it.

Search for files with File Explorer

Though you can search for files with Windows Search directly or from Start or the Taskbar, this type of search is better handled by File Explorer, the Windows 11 file management app. There, you can click the Search box in the top right of the app and start typing to search for folders and files on your PC.

Each search is scoped to the current view. If you search from the default Home view, it will search all the locations configured in Search settings, so the results will come from your Desktop, Documents, Music, and Pictures folders, plus OneDrive.

But if you navigate to a specific folder location in the local file system, it will search there and in any subfolders within.

Tip: File Explorer begins searching as you type, and its performance is dramatically better when the drive is fully indexed.

Some useful options here include:

Open a file or folder. If you double-click a file, it will open using the default app for that file type. If you double-click a folder, File Explorer will navigate to that location. You can return to the search results view by clicking “Back” (“<“) in the File Explorer command bar.

Keyboard shortcut: You can also type Alt + Left arrow to navigate Back in File Explorer.

See additional options for a result. Right-click any file or folder in the results to see options like “Cut,” “Copy,” “Rename,” “Share,” “Delete,” “Open in new tab” and “Open in new window” for folders, “Open folder location,” “Pin to Quick access” (for folders), “Pin to Start,” “Compress to…”, “Properties,” and many others.

Sort the results. File Explorer sorts search results by Relevance by default, but you can use the “Sort” command bar button to sort by Name, Date modified, Type, and other criteria, toggle between Ascending and Descending sorting orders (which can be alphabetical, numerical, chronological, location, or their reverses), and optionally group the results by criteria as desired.

Change the view. File Explorer displays search results in a Content view that displays meta-data associated with each results alongside its filename. (Folders display meta-data like Date modified and Location while files display Location, Type, and Size). But you can use the “View” command bar button to change the view to any that File Explorer supports, including Extra large icons, Large icons, Medium icons, Small icons, List, Details, and Tiles. And there are options for toggling on the File Explorer Preview pane for previewing selected results inline, and showing the results in Compact view, with selection check boxes, and more.

Access search options. By default, File Explorer search results include all files in all subfolders. But the “Search options” command bar provides lets you customize what appears. You can limit the results to the current folder, specify a range for Data modified, limit the results to a specific Kind of result (essentially file type but with additional choices like Calendar, E-mail, and others), and more.

Natural language search. File Explorer uses Windows Search to locate files and folders based on their filenames, contents (for support file types), and other meta-data like type, size, location, and more. But if you have a Copilot+ PC, File Explorer’s search capabilities are dramatically enhanced with language search capabilities that let you describe the content in files so that Search can infer what you mean. For example, you might search for green sweater in the Pictures folder to find photos that contain a green sweater, even if that term isn’t in the file’s filename or other meta-data.