How to Change the Default Search Engine in Microsoft Edge on Windows 11

Microsoft Edge is the default web browser integrated deeply into Windows 11. Naturally, because Edge is a Microsoft product, the browser’s address bar is hard-coded to use Microsoft’s own search engine, Bing. If you type a question directly into the URL bar and press Enter, you will be taken to a Bing results page. If you strongly prefer Google, DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo, you do not need to navigate to their homepages every time you want to look something up. You can simply change the default search engine deep within the Edge settings.

How to Change the Search Engine

Microsoft buries this setting quite deeply to discourage users from switching away from Bing, but it takes less than a minute to change.

1. Open the Microsoft Edge browser on your Windows 11 PC.
2. Click the three horizontal dots (Settings and more) in the extreme top right corner of the window.
3. Scroll down the menu and click on Settings (the gear icon).
4. In the left-hand navigation pane, click on Privacy, search, and services.
5. Scroll all the way down to the very bottom of this long page. Under the “Services” header, click on the option labelled Address bar and search.
6. Look for the drop-down menu labelled Search engine used in the address bar. By default, this will say “Bing (Recommended)”.
7. Click the drop-down menu and select your preferred engine (e.g., Google or DuckDuckGo).

Fixing the New Tab Page Behavior

Even after changing the setting above, you might notice strange behavior. If you open a completely new, blank tab, there is a large search box sitting in the middle of the screen. By default, if you type in that box, it will still use Bing, even if you changed the address bar to Google.

To fix this and force Edge to respect your choice globally:

1. On that exact same “Address bar and search” settings page, look directly below the drop-down menu you just changed.
2. You will see an option labelled Search on new tabs uses search box or address bar.
3. Click the drop-down menu and change it from “Search box” to Address bar.

Now, whenever you click inside the large search box in the middle of a new tab, your cursor will instantly jump up to the URL bar at the top, ensuring your search query is processed by Google (or your chosen engine) rather than Microsoft Bing.