How to Disable Web Results in Windows 10 Search

Windows 10 Search with and without web results

You click into Windows 10's search box so you can find a missing document or quickly launch Photoshop, but as soon as you click, you're presented with a flashing Cortana box and a set of news headlines starts to download. Then, when you start typing, the box mixes search results and suggested queries in with your local files. Say you were looking for a wordpad document with a list of amazon purchases in it. As soon as you type "ama," you see a link to Amazon.com as the top suggestion, above the file you were looking for.

Not only can web results come up higher than your local files, but they also slow down your search because they have to hit the Internet rather than just your hard drive index. Here's how to stop Windows 10 search from showing web results.

Note: In order to disable web results in search, you also have to disable Cortana.

1. Select the search box in Windows 10's taskbar. Cortana's greeting and news feed results should appear.

2. Click the notebook icon in the left pane. It's directly under the home (aka house) icon.

4. Click Settings. A menu of Cortana options appears.

5. Toggle "Cortana can give you suggestions . . . " to off.

6. Toggle "Search online and include web results" to off.

The searchbox will now say "Search Windows" instead of "Ask me anything." It will be more responsive and only show results from your hard drive or local network.

Windows 10 Basics

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The official Geeks Geek, as his weekly column is titled, Avram Piltch has guided the editorial and production of Laptopmag.com since 2007. With his technical knowledge and passion for testing, Avram programmed several of LAPTOP's real-world benchmarks, including the LAPTOP Battery Test. He holds a master's degree in English from NYU.