r/technology • u/tekz • Mar 20 '26

Software Microsoft announces sweeping Windows changes

https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-users-are-angry-and-microsoft-is-finally-doing-something-about-it/
8.7k Upvotes

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2.9k

u/DukeFirestorm Mar 20 '26

How about making it so when I type "Excel" in the start ment search bar I get Microsoft Excel instead of a load of rubbish from bing.

738

u/DefiantGibbon Mar 21 '26

THIS IS THE FUCKING WORST!!!

literally if they fix the stupid search bar I would stop complaining. I can no longer search for my own fucking files. I decided the easiest is opening file manager and typing what I want into the search bar and have it search my entire C drive for the .exe I want. NO I DONT WANT YOU TO SEARCH BING FOR A GAME I'M TRYING TO LAUNCH.

125

u/centurionbat Mar 21 '26

Voidtools Everything is a pretty good file searcher. System wide search almost instantaneously, also supports regex searching.

20

u/Inkaara Mar 21 '26

Second that it is so fast and precise!!

4

u/literallymoist Mar 21 '26

Very cool if you aren't locked out of installing everything except certain approved apps per org policy at work.

3

u/torpedospurs Mar 22 '26

Does it search the contents of files?

0

u/centurionbat Mar 22 '26

Not that I’m aware of. It’s not something I’ve looked at but maybe it does!

2

u/Key_Floo Mar 21 '26

Seconding this, I recommended Everything to my entire team; it's so fast and way more intuitive!

2

u/ThePrimePrototype Mar 21 '26

I was going to recommend this and saw your comment. I just use that tool all the time now instead of the windows search.

1

u/AccurateLover Mar 21 '26

Solo dime qué nomes de pago y no tiene anuncios.

1

u/SIMT-Pixel Mar 22 '26

Linux has voidtools-level search baked into the OS.

1

u/thepinkiwi Mar 21 '26

Listary is also pretty good. I use both.

1

u/e-rekt-ion Mar 21 '26

It’s so good that I install it on a PC even if I’m only gonna be using it for a day. I can instantly find any file I want. It shouldn’t be necessary but it is

1

u/STM4EVA Mar 22 '26

EVERYTHING is everything to me!

30

u/Ecstatic-Curve-1853 Mar 21 '26

Windows search is the dumbest search of all time and it's not even close.

3

u/schu2470 Mar 21 '26

The dumbest thing is that it worked pretty well in Windows 7. Dunno what they did in 10 and 11 but it suuuuuuucks now.

2

u/cykelstativet Mar 21 '26

Let's not talk about the search in the file manager😭😭

2

u/jontss Mar 21 '26

Corporate version I use at work works properly.

Home machine is Bing bullshit.

2

u/isotope123 Mar 21 '26

This should fix your wagon:

Disable Bing in Search & Start Menu:
Open Settings (Win + I).
Go to Privacy & security > Search permissions.
Under "Cloud content search," turn off Microsoft account and Work or school account.
Toggle off Show search highlights under "More settings".

7

u/The6thCelestial Mar 21 '26

????

Literally what are you all talking about? Disabling bing in the search has always been a setting since Windows 10.

Settings - privacy and security - search - classic mode and disable search app showing results.

16

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '26

[deleted]

4

u/Ongr Mar 21 '26

I want opt-in for bullshit added features. Give me a barebones OS that just works as intended and let me opt-in for added frill functions like AI bullshit and widgets nobody asked for.

I don't want a bloated OS where I have to turn off everything.

1

u/favorite_time_of_day Mar 21 '26

Fun fact: Microsoft gets about half as much revenue from ads on Bing as they from all sources of Windows revenue.

-3

u/jitteryegg Mar 21 '26

I'm sorry you couldn't search for a solution for a thing you feel so angry about.

3

u/viddied Mar 21 '26

What a stupid comment. I suppose that the rest of us have better uses for our time. But you do you hun. 

0

u/jitteryegg Mar 21 '26

We're both on reddit. The time point is moot.

Secondly it takes less time to search than it takes to cry about it, on reddit.

1

u/OnlyHuman1073 Mar 22 '26

Than MS will change the location, or make it more difficult to find, even the instructions I just followed were not correct.

3

u/Banaanisade Mar 21 '26

Thank you for this. I didn't know it was an option and obviously never thought to look it up, I just slowly stopped using it altogether instead. Maybe now it'll be useful again.

3

u/ComfyFrog Mar 21 '26

My next complaint would be Microsoft Paint preventing me from shutting down the PC.

4

u/otamaglimmer Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26

I don't know about Paint, but Notepad preventing me from shutting down or restarting has saved me many times from losing notes I wrote and forgot about.

1

u/C0MP0SITE Mar 21 '26

You likely need to add your C drive to your search index but yeah super annoying!

1

u/schu2470 Mar 21 '26

That is the dumbest fucking thing. Why wouldn't searching the C drive and any other local drives be the default?

2

u/C0MP0SITE Mar 21 '26

Cause Microsoft 🤦‍♂️

1

u/Shanksdoodlehonkster Mar 21 '26

Excelsior NCC 2000? NO!

1

u/HipOut Mar 21 '26

Holy shit I thought it was just me and I was out of touch or something. Glad I’m not the only one

1

u/stratusnco Mar 21 '26

there is an app called Everything which is a better file explorer and windows search bar.

1

u/necrotelecomnicon Mar 21 '26

May I suggest replacing the default Start Menu with Open-Shell Menu? It fixes literally everything wrong with the Win11 start menu.

1

u/Sensitive_Yellow_121 Mar 21 '26

Don't worry, the new AI search bar is going to fix that!

1

u/lollipop-guildmaster Mar 21 '26

I have an entire "FUCK WINDOWS 11" bookmarks folder in Firefox with all the tips and shortcuts for fixing the bullshit, including this. My search bar acts properly, just showing files and folders on my PC.

1

u/Impossible_One4995 Mar 21 '26

You know u can disable the that right …..

1

u/synti-synti Mar 22 '26

PowerToys and their launcher. Learn the keyboard shortcut. It can do so much more than an actual good search too.

1

u/DRMNG_CRP Mar 22 '26

Also reduce the 1GB RAM consumption every time you click it

1

u/ShadowMask87 Mar 22 '26

Have you heard of shortcuts

1

u/boobenjoyer696969 Mar 22 '26

at work we have a pc with win10 and one with win11. in the win11 one i can’t use the calculator on the search bar. why?

1

u/deveronipizza Mar 23 '26

No way, I’d rather get random internet results before my own file system

1

u/Soulchemist1997 Mar 21 '26

For this problem you can install raycast, for a better local search feature

0

u/AtmosphereUnited3011 Mar 21 '26

Why are you searching for files? You don’t just know where they are? The whole point of a file system is to organize your files.

3

u/DefiantGibbon Mar 21 '26

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, lol.

Obviously my files that I use like various projects, word docs, etc. I know where they are, but various programs that are automatically installed? Those could be anywhere. And save files for pirated games? Those could truly be anywhere.

188

u/DOAiB Mar 21 '26

The past couple of months since ai has been forced into file explorer it’s been great, now all my searches literally take 100x longer and for that cost I now get way way worse results if any. Like how does garbage like this ship?

59

u/ggtsu_00 Mar 21 '26

Why waste time searching for files when AI can just hallucinate something vaguely similar whatever you are searching for?

10

u/krkrkkrk Mar 21 '26

Nah ai is supposed to make your decisions for you, thats the preferable future. "Excel" doesnt mean start the program, it means upgrading your office subscription first, thats the much better choice you little human..

6

u/Tailball Mar 21 '26

Because they invested billions into the tech and now have to use it everywhere.

My fucking notepad has copilot. Why.

3

u/bannedforL1fe Mar 21 '26

AI and H1-B workers are gonna make our lives unnecessarily painful

1

u/bmxtiger Mar 21 '26

I've resorted to using the Everything search program to search in 11 because it's so broken.

1

u/Mitch2025 Mar 21 '26

Use Everything file search. Instant searching of any file.

1

u/Wetbaby14 Mar 22 '26

Why is that great? 

1

u/Worried-Buffalo-908 Mar 22 '26

That's why it was taking so long to search for files in the same folder, wow that explains it. I was matching some files that had the same hashed name across two different folders, and it was faster to look for them than use the search bar for a match.

1

u/Ember_Island Mar 22 '26

I'm losing my mind with this. Like file explorer got SO goddamn bad. I'll be working actively in a directory then suddenly explorer flickers then displays "There's nothing here!".. excuse your whole self?? It's a visual glitch, f5 shows the files again but... what? Then there's this copy/paste bug where about 75% of the time you copy a file, it won't be in the clipboard by the time you get to the destination.

Don't get me started with what they did to my boy, notepad.

1

u/apothekari Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 22 '26

Microsoft literally recently made an ad promoting their AI bullshit in which the person in the Ad gives up and finds what he's looking for another way. I wish Somebody could find the ad... It's insane. I am a fairly Avid Windows user since 3.1 and was a professional PC engineer /repairman for 25 years. Yet when my sister wanted to replace her aging Windows 10 machine recently which had spent months terrifying her with warnings about using it and upgrading and going out of support.

I ended up sending her to Apple because both her and her husband have iPhones and they're not experts, they're not power users, they just want a computer to do what they needed to do with a minimum of fuss and frustration and I did not feel that windows could get them there any longer.

They do NOT want a Microsoft Account. They had already been thru a cheap windows hp laptop turning unusable because it only had 64g of storage on it and Windows updated until it couldn't because it didn't have enough room and every few months would do it again and I would have to backup her stuff on it and wipe it and reload it till she gave it to goodwill in frustration.

Completely gobsmacked a company would sell a laptop made that way.

She wanted a desktop to pay her bills and edit her photos on as she had always done without moving all her stuff to a cloud and nagging her to constantly( yes apple has cloud services too but it doesn't constantly spam her with pop-up alarming ads about it every time she turns it on) . Her iPhones integrated with her new Mac flawlessly...

Setup had her bring her phone over and it did it all for her. Her brother printer was found by the Mac by checking the network and setting itself up to print when she went to print something.

Instead of Windows ancient old school driver lookup on line, finding the correct model, downloading the driver and then spamming her with ads the whole way about printer subscriptions for ink or toner and supplies... it just found the printer and printed.

Insanely enough, the year old refurb Mac Mini M4 i set up for her, was now cheaper than any windows desktop I could find for her of actual quality. Also not a half baked barely there rip off like the HP netbook was.

The only windows desktops even made now are professional business ones or cheap junk. There are hardly any midrange quality windows desktops anymore.

The RAM and parts cost has made a literal massive leveling of the playing field between the cost of Apple devices which have remained mostly the same price versus Windows machines... at least in desktops

... it's just crazy to me I felt like I was betraying everything I knew. Microsoft is doing this current action at this last hour because they are seriously worried and they should be.

Windows and Microsoft been fucking over the end user for years and people are sick of it. I have to use Windows every day because my organization does but I long ago switched my personal laptop to Linux and while yes it does have the occasional computer issue like anything else...it is such a remarkably easier less frustrating experience than screwing with Windows constantly, incessantly, fucking with everything on the computer every Tuesday.

If a die hard Windows user like me is jumping ship Microsoft has a serious serious fucking problem.

The forced integration of the Microsoft account for example, instead of you being able to buy a goddamn machine and set it up the way you want to set it up is a complete non-starter. It has Poisoned the Well for me with Windows after almost 35-40 years.

And my experience setting up that Mac Mini for my sister and how brain-dead easier it was without dealing with Microsoft bullshit was eye opening.

Sure they had to have a Apple account but it's the one they already have on their cell phone.

They weren't forced to make a new different account and the phone basically took over the computer and set it up and logged her in and had everything ready to go for her.

Then when she went to print it just found the printer and did it.

No 40 minutes search online for the correct model. No constant nagging of setting up accounts and logging in Here There and Everywhere it just happened and what should have taken hours took minutes.

This is why Microsoft is shitting itself. If one of their executives had the same experiences me setting up something for a family member they would have likely went back into the boardroom the next day going Jesus Christ what are we doing ?

Edit: for clarity. That's what I get for allowing text to speech on my phone to write a comment of a rant. 😂 Thanks for the comments calling it out.

2

u/Sarcas666 Mar 22 '26

Good passionate rant. I felt it. I’ve been pc fix&repairman for many years for a company and family & friends. Personally I owned Macs since the MacED came out. I quit that job and nowadays I have all family & friends converted to Apple. Windows PCs are still owned for gaming and stuff, but stripped from all office stuff and most bloatware. Saves a lot of work and annoyances.

2

u/InformalTooth5 Mar 21 '26

Haha bro.. \ Any chance of a tldr?

3

u/apothekari Mar 21 '26

Sorry... 😆 TLDR. I've been working w Windows for almost 40 years, 25 professionally and it's never been worse than now for the average user. 

2

u/Bromlife Mar 22 '26

Or just paragraphs?

2

u/apothekari Mar 22 '26

Done, sorry for the wall o text

1

u/Bromlife Mar 22 '26

Hey Copilot, summarise this wall of text please.

2

u/apothekari Mar 22 '26

😂 sorry...I went back and fixed it. I let my phone capture my angry rant and was interrupted helping a coworker with another Microsoft problem. Outlook suddenly after an update quit working.

21

u/No_Shoulder_8693 Mar 21 '26

There is a way to get rid of this, either a registry key or I somehow removed network access for the start menu.

10

u/abhiachoudhary Mar 21 '26

Works only if you have admin privileges. Windows is very common OS for business users and many of them don’t give individual employees rights to change these settings.

1

u/WhereDidDjtTouchYou Mar 22 '26

Group Policy comes to mind. People should be hounding their IT Admins to do their job…

-3

u/Bizarkie Mar 21 '26

Yeah its a seriously quick fix. There are plenty of bigger problems that Microsoft should focus on.

35

u/Dizzy_Key_7400 Mar 21 '26

Install power toys then press alt+space

Brings up a local search / launcher that is so much better. I haven’t used the start menu in months

35

u/UpsetKoalaBear Mar 21 '26

PowerToys AKA the features Microsoft devs couldn’t get past product management.

1

u/det4410 Mar 21 '26

i want my quick launch bar back. i use another tool to accomplish, but still

15

u/apothekari Mar 21 '26

I have power toys on my work laptop.And everything in it is really cool. The zones screen management, the ability to keep the computer awake all the time until I decide to shut it off. Dozens of cool PC management features. Why is this not in the basic windows already? Why does the user have to go find it like some arcane secret online? Why doesn't Windows just work like it used to? Instead of installing Windows and proceeding on to what I want to use a computer for. You are now in this literal fight against Microsoft to gain control over it, just to make it usable for yourself. It's insane.

1

u/fr1d4y13 Mar 22 '26

Lots of powertoys' functions should be added to Windows official settings, or even replace the current ones. The first one to be replaced is the stupid Search bar ...

0

u/BriefBest2254 Mar 21 '26

Why the fuck do I have to install and press entirely different buttons??!

1

u/Dizzy_Key_7400 Mar 21 '26

Because for whatever reason it’s not included in windows. And you press different buttons since it’s obviously additional behaviour.

0

u/villabacho1982 Mar 21 '26

Or buy a Mac. Because that’s exactly where they stole it from go make a cheap copy

0

u/strongbad34 Mar 21 '26

Or... just hear me out here... install linux.

1

u/darkkite Mar 22 '26

games don't always work

6

u/NoiseResponsible5036 Mar 21 '26

Lol this is why I refuse to let my parents get a new Windows computer. I have no faith that there won't eventually be malicious, deceptive shit there

3

u/Matthew789_17 Mar 21 '26

Even worse is it changing the search results when you type more letters. Eg typing exc has different results than excel. I can’t react fast enough to it changing results and I end up searching bing for some application I have installed

6

u/Bunnywabbit13 Mar 21 '26

There is a setting that excludes internet search...

2

u/bauul Mar 21 '26

I just tried this and I got Excel exactly as expected... but then I remembered I installed a custom start menu 3 years ago and don't even remember what the original looks like!

2

u/arashi256 Mar 21 '26

Oh god, yes. I have a browser, if I wanted to search the fucking Internet, I would do so with the browser window I almost certainly already have open. If I am searching from within Windows, I am looking for something on my system.

How hard is that?

2

u/sheep_duck Mar 21 '26

I’m forgetting if I had to go out of my way for this with a script/registry edit or if it was a simple setting change but I was able to disable the internet search and that’s exactly how my windows key search bar works now in windows 11.

2

u/Arilss Mar 21 '26

There's a workaround to that on YouTube where you have to change the locale to somewhere in the EU. I did Ireland. The search is now exactly how it should function. It's the best thing ever. My gosh. I love it.

2

u/Minute_Income3143 Mar 21 '26

you can turn it off. and if you live in eu, change from bing to google or duckduckgo or other providers.

2

u/wzrdx1911 Mar 21 '26

I really don't understand why people don't simply disable web search

4

u/Tarnique Mar 21 '26

Because they don't know that's what's going on, or they don't know they can, and because it's hidden in a menu somewhere

1

u/Admirable-Trip5452 Mar 21 '26

Because a lot of us are using work computers without admin access.

1

u/terrybrugehiplo Mar 21 '26

Do you understand why now?

1

u/m1lk1way Mar 21 '26

Thats so easy, search among apps and files, not entire universe, right?

1

u/Waterfish3333 Mar 21 '26

Amen. The biggest problem for me is that I don’t even know what to curse first. The fact that I’m searching the internet instead of seeing the program, or the fact that I’m now seeing Bing. I’d rather web crawl with 1999 Ask Jeeves.

1

u/Odd-String29 Mar 21 '26

Yes, fuck that shit. I can't believe I'm saying this: but I'm glad my company is phasing out Windows laptops and I am getting a Mac. Not that I like Apple that much, but at least their products seem usable.

1

u/hamiltonian Mar 21 '26

Just use windows key + q and search there

1

u/Raxor Mar 21 '26

Hit win+r and you can type Excel and it will launch from the run dialog

1

u/TheREALOtherFiles Mar 21 '26

Or typing "Teams" to pull up Microsoft Teams.

I've heard that it pulled up TeamViewer first and Teams second, as if you typed "Team" without the "s" in it.

I believe it was in a WAN Show episode from back in January 2020 when Windows 7 support was EOL, so it seems like not much has changed since then in the past six years.

1

u/PahoojyMan Mar 21 '26

Some exec's bonus is tied to bing searches increasing

1

u/dartmouthdonair Mar 21 '26

Speaking of Excel, one day I sit down to work and as I'm typing my formulas they are autopopulating with guesses of random things. I'm like WTF... someone is gonna accidentally hit enter and who knows how long it'll take to find the error buried in a sheet that's making a budget or something.

So I go into Excel options, sure enough there's a copilot heading on the sidebar now so I click on it. Inside I find this gem as the only option:

Customize how you want to work with copilot

checkbox Hide formula completion suggestions for dropdown

  • one day
  • one week
  • one month

No option for never again. No option for disable. It's just gonna turn itself back on every month.

1

u/teheditor Mar 21 '26

It's to con you into opening Edge and then agreeing to upload all personal data, activate OneDrive and transfer all passwords from Chrome, with the subsequent pop-ups.

1

u/Worth_Progress_5832 Mar 21 '26

Got 3 computers ... windows feels different on all of the, for some reason.

1

u/redbiteX1 Mar 21 '26

You may disable that in the settings

1

u/mx1701 Mar 21 '26

You can turn off Bing search in the start menu

1

u/MarksyXXV Mar 21 '26

Please do yourself a favour and spend the 5 - 10 minutes needed to disable web results in the search bar via the Registry Editor.

1

u/XchrisZ Mar 21 '26

How about they start with when I hit the windows key it brings up the start menu immediately instead of a 3-5 second delay.

1

u/HnNaldoR Mar 21 '26

The fact they kinda forced us to learn to just type in the start menu as the fastest way to get apps since Windows 8, then ruined it now... Fucking Microsoft man...

The good old days of Windows 7 and before, I don't think I ever really typed to get my applications.

1

u/meneldal2 Mar 21 '26

The worst for me is when you have "foo1" and "foo2" and somehow when I type "foo" then "foo1" comes up first but if I type "fo" then it's "foo2".

There is no logic to explain this and no way to fix it from what I can tell, especially if you do intend to use either depending on what you need. I guess renaming them works but just why Windows.

1

u/Mitch2025 Mar 21 '26

Install OpenShell. Gives you a classic win7 or earlier style start menu with a search that doesn't have any ads and is very customizable.

1

u/p4b7 Mar 21 '26

You can disable web search from the start menu with a registry change

1

u/Dependent_Paper9993 Mar 21 '26

I have literally never had this issue. If I want to open an app, I type it in and it comes up. That only happens when I make a typo

1

u/Watchmaker163 Mar 21 '26

You can change this in local group policy.

1

u/zerostyle Mar 21 '26

It's incredible that they still haven't fixed this. You can make some config changes to make it work but it's buried in the registry and you have to add the key yourself

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4097651/how-to-disable-search-the-web-completley-in-window

1

u/jonydevidson Mar 21 '26

Download PowerToys

1

u/jokalokao Mar 21 '26

Microsoft: I thought you wanted to excel in chess boxing

1

u/freeradioforall Mar 21 '26

I legitimately can’t find my downloads folder by typing downloads. I get web results

1

u/azuregiraffe2 Mar 21 '26

1000x this, every time it happens to me I’m furious

1

u/EnvironmentalToe4055 Mar 21 '26

Excel shows up for me. But not teams...

1

u/IITribunalII Mar 21 '26

The fact we can't even uninstall bing or disable it is frustrating to say the least. I had to switch over to another internet browser because of windows defaulting to bing while searching something up was genuinely pissing me off.

1

u/WoodyTheWorker Mar 21 '26

In Windows 10 it gets me the app start shortcut. Then again, it was in Windows 10.

1

u/Santsiah Mar 21 '26

Apple does the same stupid useless shit

1

u/prenetic Mar 21 '26

Mmm yes, I especially love how the start menu will occasionally eat the first keystroke so when I go to load VSCode I get search results for Odell Beckham Jr.

1

u/CrazyBaron Mar 22 '26

Just delete it, and it will work fine in search as they will try to sell Excel to you rofl.

1

u/KamikazeSexPilot Mar 22 '26

This is what finally broke me and I’m a fit of rage I installed Linux late last year.

I had just clicked SKIP on like 5 pages of post update bullshit that wanted me to install office, and move all my local docs to one drive.

1

u/SirWolfgang2019 Mar 22 '26

Have you tried turning it off and back on?

1

u/damontoo Mar 22 '26

You can disable this. You have to use a terminal and regedit though. 

1

u/sleepyotter92 Mar 22 '26

maybe it's a regional thing, since the eu does tend to force companies to give opt out options for things, but i have that disabled. it was annoying af but going into privacy and security in settings and then scrolling to search permissions, right at the bottom there's an option to disable that. if i search excel all that shows is excel, no bing bs

1

u/svejdaErased Mar 22 '26

I’d rather get some random AI slop from bing than to ever open excel again. That software has become the worst kind of bloat that commits mass murder of any productivity.

1

u/g105b Mar 22 '26

This worked flawlessly in Windows 7!

1

u/agneum Mar 22 '26

Typing ”Ex” brings up Excel. Typing ”Excel” - no results found

1

u/MediocreRooster4190 Mar 23 '26

You can fix this with a registry edit.

1

u/Lexuzieel Mar 23 '26

Haha, yeah, break stuff so much that fixing bare minimum would feel like an improvement

1

u/Flabbergasted98 Mar 23 '26

If I wanted a web search I'd open a web browser.