Unless you change the default settings on your Privacy Dashboard, Microsoft Windows 11 stores your complete search history on your device and in the cloud.
Search Engine (magnifying glass icon) found on a standard Windows 11 The desktop taskbar is a convenient and useful feature. But have you ever considered exactly how that feature’s default settings affect search results? Or, more importantly, how exactly does it remember everything you’ve ever searched for and store it in the cloud for future reference?
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User adjustable Search the feature’s settings, but Microsoft doesn’t say where the setting is located or if it’s available. Digging deeper into those Search configuration settings can be a lot of fun and can be a bit of a hassle if you’re concerned about your privacy online.
How to change your search settings and increase your privacy in Windows 11
Clicking the magnifying glass icon on the standard Windows 11 taskbar opens the Search feature, as shown in Picture A.
Picture A
Type your query in the text box and Search will give you a list of results to choose from. This feature searches your device for documents, folders, apps, and websites that match your search terms — convenient and useful.
To access basic settings for Windows 11 Search, click the ellipsis at the far right of the menu (Picture A) and select “Search Settings”, which will take you to the Search Permissions screen shown in Figure BUT.
Figure BUT
The first section on this page is called “Safe Search,” which allows you to specify how much adult content should appear in your search results. This is a personal preference setting.
The next section is called “Searching for Cloud Content,” which allows you to personalize your search results to include content from OneDrive, SharePoint, Outlook, and other web services.
The sequel is called History, as shown in SIZE. These settings allow you to save your search history to your device and to the cloud, which, according to Microsoft, allows the system to reuse previous results to make your current search efficient and effective. more fruitful.
SIZE
You have the option to turn the feature off completely if you don’t want your search history to be saved. Under normal circumstances, you probably won’t notice much of a difference in the overall performance of Search in Windows 11 with this setting set to the “off” position.
If you choose to enable this setting, and depending on your search history and personal feelings about privacy, you may be able to clear it from time to time. To clear your device’s search history, click the Clear device search history button.
Deleting your search history from the cloud is more complicated as that can only be done from the Privacy Dashboard located on your Microsoft account website. Click the link in the History section labeled Privacy Dashboard, where you’ll be asked to sign in to your Microsoft account page, as shown in Visualization.
Visualization
Once signed in, scroll down to the Security page, find the Search History section, then expand it to show more details, as shown in Figure E.
Figure E
The system has saved nearly 1,200 of my searches to the cloud. The device I’m using in this example is less than a year old, so, as you can see, it doesn’t take long to establish an important search history.
While the individual searches listed can be benign, they can reveal more about your personality and habits than you feel comfortable sharing. Managing your search history should be part of your regular maintenance routine.
From this section, you can check your search history, download search history, delete or leave search history as is. You can even delete individual searches if you want. The choice is yours, but these cloud changes can only be made from the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard.
