You can no longer disable web search in Windows 10 v1803

Radu Tyrsina
by Radu Tyrsina
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
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disable web search Windows 10

If you are eager to upgrade your device running Windows to the much-awaited Spring Creators Update, first there are some significant changes that you need to learn. For instance, the company seems to have broken a few policies in the latest version of the OS.

“Do not allow web search” now seems to do nothing when you enable it on your system.

The functionality used to mix local search with web search and search results used to display local results matching the search term, and they also suggested web search results taken from Bing.

‘Disable web search’ won’t work in Windows 10 Spring Creators Update

Now, it looks like Microsoft did something to the ‘Disable web search’ option in the latest update of the OS. Even if users have configured all three antiweb search policies, web search remains enabled on their devices. Apparently, this happens only with systems running Windows 10 Pro, and the Education/Enterprise versions of the OS are not affected.

You can find the three policies by heading to Local Computer Policy – Computer Configuration – Administrative Templates – Windows Components – Search.

The policies include:

  • Do not allow web search
  • Don’t search the web or display web results in Search
  • Don’t search the web or display web results in Search over metered connections

If you enable all three of them, Windows 10 will not block web search results. What’s worse, the upcoming version of Windows will bring the same problem.

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