If you do not want the Search box on your Taskbar to display the History of your searches, then this post will help you. Microsoft allows its users to be able to make use of both the Start menu and the Taskbar to make searches on Windows 11/10. Although they both use the same search component, their interface and offerings differ a bit. On the one hand, you find installed programs enlisted in the Start menu, while the search window on the Taskbar showcases the apps that are most frequently used by you on the top, with the most recent searches below it on the left and a quick access menu to the weather or important news on the right.
While some users might find the recent searches that the search bar displays useful, since it allows them to go revisit those topics quickly and conveniently, that may not be the case for all. Others may find it intrusive, in case any sensitive information was searched for and someone else was able to look at it from the search history section. If you belong to the latter group, this post is for you. Today we will discuss how you can disable the search history of the Taskbar search box in Windows 11/10.
Disable Search history of the taskbar search box in Windows 10
Users should note that here, we will be demonstrating how the search history setting displayed on the taskbar search box can be disabled permanently. There is an option for you to remove individual searches too, without getting rid of the feature altogether.
In order to do so, users simply have to drag their cursor to the search entry that they want to remove and click on the ‘X’ icon to the right of the entry. As you will notice, removing a search entry will add a previous entry to the recent searches list. For e.g., if you remove the first entry, the other entries will move up a slot and a new previously searched entry will be found at the bottom.
In order to disable the search box’s search history setting, you have to follow the steps below.
- Search for your Windows settings in the taskbar search box or directly open them using the Windows +’I’ shortcut key.
- In the search bar on top of the settings window search for Permissions & History.
- Scroll down to the history sub-head.
- Toggle off the option that says store the Search history of this device.
- If you want to delete the search history that has been cataloged by your computer to date, you can click on the Clear device search history button.
- If you choose to reactivate this feature at a later date and not clear your existing history, then you will see those searches again.
You can now close your settings page and open the search box to find that the section where the search history used to appear previously has now disappeared and below the Top apps section are the Quick searches.
We hope that you will now be able to easily disable search history on your taskbar’s search box. The picture above is an example of how the search field menu is going to look once the search history has been disabled.
Disable Taskbar search box history in Windows 11
In Windows 11, you can disable the Search history of the taskbar search box in Windows 11, via Windows Settings as follows:
- Press Win+I to open Settings
- Select Privacy & security from the left menu
- Click on Search permissions on the right side
- Under History, click on the Clear device history button
- Also, turn off Search history on this device.
This way, you can prevent your search activities from being tracked and synced by your Windows computer.
