The Visual Clutter Vector
By default, when you click the search bar or press the Windows Key in Windows 11, the operating system attempts to populate the resulting panel with “Search Highlights.” This feature pulls topical imagery, daily historical facts, trending news items, and Bing web suggestions directly into your Start Menu interface. For users operating in a focused, professional environment, these brightly coloured, constantly shifting graphics are highly distracting and completely irrelevant to finding a local file or application.
How to Disable Search Highlights
You can force Windows 11 to strip away all external web content, returning the search panel to a purely functional, locally focused utility.
1. Open the Start Menu and click the Settings gear icon (or press the Windows Key + I).
2. In the left-hand sidebar, click on Privacy & security.
3. Scroll down the main pane to the Windows permissions section and click on Search permissions.
4. Scroll down almost to the very bottom of this long menu until you locate the section labelled More settings.
5. You will see a toggle switch labelled Show search highlights.
6. Click the toggle to switch it to the Off position.
The next time you open the Windows search panel, it will be entirely devoid of external graphics and trending news, presenting only your recent local files and top applications.