I changed these Windows Search settings and it finally stopped fighting me

Windows Search has a reputation, and it’s not a good one. It’s slow, unreliable, and annoyingly includes Bing suggestions almost nobody finds useful. Now the easy solution is to simply replace the Start menu with a third-party app like Everything. But if you don’t want to install yet another app, you can make Windows search better by tweaking a few settings.

Enable "Enhanced" search indexing

The default mode is holding you back

Windows doesn’t actually scan your entire drive every time you look something up. Instead, it maintains an index that basically includes the file names and their properties, so it can find things fast. It’s not much different from a book’s index that points you to the right chapters quickly.

By default, Windows search index only covers folders like Documents, Pictures, Music, and the Desktop. It calls this Classic mode. So if you’ve ever typed a filename into the Start menu and gotten nothing, even though you know the file exists, that’s probably why. It’s sitting somewhere Windows never bothered to look.

The fix is simple. Head to Settings > Privacy & security > Search and choose Enhanced. Windows will then scan your entire drive and index the metadata of every file. The initial crawl of your data will take some time and even bump up CPU usage. But that’s perfectly normal. And once that’s done, you’ll get better search results.

Windows even lets you exclude unimportant folders from the same menu, which I feel is worth doing. This will speed up the indexing process and stop Windows from wasting resources on stuff you don’t care about.

Make Windows search file contents

Filenames aren’t always enough

Switching to Enhanced mode gets Windows to index more places. But by default, it’ll still only index file names and properties and not what’s actually inside your files. This can be an issue when you’re trying to find a Word document by a phrase or a PDF by its topic. Windows Search will likely come up empty when you do this, but you can fix that too by making Windows index file contents.

1. Type in indexing options in the search menu and hit Enter.
2. Click the Advanced button and head to the File Types tab.
3. Select all the file extensions you care about.
4. Choose Index Properties and File Contents and hit OK.

Now you simply have to wait for Windows to rebuild the index, which, of course, will take some time. But after that, searching for a phrase will actually pull up documents containing that phrase, which is extremely handy. The obvious trade-off with this one is that the index size will grow since it’ll be storing more information. But if your PC is powerful enough, you don’t have to worry about it.

Remove Bing results from the Start menu

They are not useful anyway

Even after you make the Windows search more thorough, it might still feel slower than it should. That’s because when you type something into the Start menu, Windows is not just looking at the index and local apps. It’s also funneling that traffic through Bing, which means the actual speeds depend on how fast your internet is and how quick Bing is to respond to the query. Even if you find those web results helpful, the slowdown isn’t worth it.

Windows doesn't include a simple toggle to disable web searches in the Start menu, so you’ll need to use the Registry Editor. First, create a registry backup and then follow these steps:

1. Type registry editor in the search menu and hit Enter.
2. Head to the following path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search
3. Right-click anywhere in the right pane and choose New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
4. Name the DWORD BingSearchEnabled and set the value to 0.

Restart your PC after this and you’ll be sorted. Windows will now only show local results and nothing from Bing.

Use search filters

Stop scrolling and start filtering

At this point, Windows Search is already doing a lot more than it was out of the box. But if you’re still struggling to find something specific, search filters are what you need. Instead of simply typing the filename and hoping for the best, you can narrow things down by file type, date modified, size, and other properties.

In File Explorer, first type your search query as usual and then add a search operator at the end. For instance, typing kind:document or kind:image will help you filter results by file type. If you type size:>10MB, Windows will filter results by file size. Typing datemodified:last week will help you find recently modified files.

The best part is that you can also stack these. And once you get used to searching files this way, you’ll be able to narrow down search results way more quickly.