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How To Disable Search Highlights in Windows 11

Search Highlights in Windows 11

Search highlights are one of the many features Microsoft has introduced to Windows in order to try to boost adoption of Bing, their search engine. While they can be fun for some people, if you're like me then you don't like when things are changed about your computer, especially when these changes involve connecting to online services in order to collect data. Thankfully, the feature can be disabled fairly easily.

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An example of Search Highlights showing that it's Tom Hanks' birthday, a bit of information very relevant to me.

How to Disable Search Highlights

In order to disable these suggestions, you need to disable the Show search highlights option in your Search Permissions settings.

  1. Open the Settings app
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  2. Navigate to Privacy & security
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  3. Find Search permissions in the list
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  4. Under "More settings", disable the toggle for "Show search highlights" (it will say "Off" when it is disabled)
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Thanks for posting this, amat393. It's really helpful.

I really dislike news, media and trending content invading my workspace. Windows seems to be sneaking this type of content in more and more frequently. I've disable this sort of content from popping up in the lower right corner several times now, but it never stays disabled, and now it's appearing in the search menu in the guise of 'search highlights'. @Microsoft, you can harvest my data all you like, but I find this kind of invasion into my productivity quite disrespectful.

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Last updated April 19, 2025 Views 6,561 Applies to: