Windows 11 adds toggles to remove Bing results and Store suggestions from Search

Windows 11 is rolling out toggles that remove Bing web results and Microsoft Store suggestions from Search, in an optional August update that is being released gradually. Microsoft removed Bing from the Windows Search pane for users in the European Economic Area to meet the Digital Markets Act deadline of 6 March 2024.

Windows 11 is getting a switch that turns Bing off in Search. It arrives in an optional August update, Digital Trends reported.

There are two toggles under privacy settings. One controls web results and the other Microsoft Store suggestions, and disabling both leaves Search looking only at the machine in front of you.

Turning them off makes Search quicker. It no longer waits for an online Bing request before returning what is already on the computer, Windows Latest found.

The home screen loses its clutter as well. Trending searches and promotional content are gone, and results now say whether they came from a file, an app, a setting or the web.

The rollout is staged rather than immediate. Installing the update does not switch the feature on, because Microsoft is enabling it gradually across machines that already have the code.

None of this is new in Europe. It arrived here two and a half years ago, and not as a preference but as a compliance measure.

Microsoft removed Bing from the Windows Search pane for users in the European Economic Area, announced in November 2023, along with the ability to uninstall Edge.

It shipped against a deadline rather than a request. Full compliance with the Digital Markets Act was due on 6 March 2024.

The rest of the world waited for it. The ability to keep Bing out of Search reaches everyone else in an optional update this month, roughly thirty months later.

Windows is a designated core platform service under the act, alongside the other gatekeeper services the Commission named.

The pattern is familiar by now. Choice screens, uninstallable apps and honoured default settings appear in Europe first and travel outward afterwards, usually without an announcement.

The Commission has moved past asking. Google was fined €890M in its first penalty under the same regulation.

Which is the thing worth noticing. A feature users had complained about for years arrived first where a regulator required it, and everywhere else once it existed anyway.