How to Turn Off the Search Highlights Image on the Windows 11 Taskbar

By default, Windows 11 places a wide Search box directly on your taskbar. To encourage users to click it, Microsoft routinely pushes “Search Highlights”—small, colourful cartoon illustrations or stock photos that sit inside the right edge of the search box. These daily images often link to Bing trivia games, historical anniversaries, or seasonal events. If you prefer a clean, professional desktop without Microsoft advertising daily trivia in your peripheral vision, you can disable this feature entirely.

How to Disable Search Highlights

You can turn off these daily illustrations directly from the Windows 11 Settings app.

1. Open the Settings app by pressing Windows Key + I.
2. In the left-hand sidebar, click on Privacy & security.
3. Scroll down the page to the “Windows permissions” section and click on Search permissions.
4. Scroll all the way down to the very bottom of this new page until you find a section titled More settings.
5. Look for the toggle switch labelled Show search highlights.
6. Click the toggle to turn it Off.

The change is instantaneous. The cartoon illustration will immediately vanish from your taskbar search box, leaving behind a clean, empty white (or dark gray) space. Furthermore, when you actually click on the Search box to find a file, the massive popup panel will no longer be cluttered with Bing trending news articles and celebrity gossip.