Windows – How to disable internet search results in start menu post Creators Update

cortanawindows 10windows-10-v1703windows-10-v1803

It used to be possible to disable internet search results in start menu searches before the Windows 10 Creators Update, but I've just clean installed a new Windows 10 Pro image and that setting is gone. Is there some way to disable it through editing the registry/etc?

Best Answer

The article The Windows 10 spring update no longer lets you disable web search in Start - workaround reports that the following registry update is required in Windows 10 version 1803 :

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search]
"BingSearchEnabled"=dword:00000000
"AllowSearchToUseLocation"=dword:00000000
"CortanaConsent"=dword:00000000

It remarks :

those entries are completely missing from the "Search" registry key, so you can safely delete them should you want to revert.

I would still recommend to at least create a system restore point before doing any registry modifications.

A reboot might be required.

User @mtd has contributed below these commands for applying the updates to the registry:

reg add HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /f /v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0
reg add HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /f /v AllowSearchToUseLocation /t REG_DWORD /d 0
reg add HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /f /v CortanaConsent /t REG_DWORD /d 0

There are reports that Windows 10 version 2004 has broken the above fix.

The article Disable Web Search in Taskbar in Windows 10 Version 2004 has a summary of the current state of the problem.

The current solution seems to be to download and run this PowerShell script as Administrator:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Scope Process
.\disable-web-search.ps1

As only a workaround, this PowerShell script blocks the online search using Windows Firewall rules, so forcing the search to operate in offline mode.

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