Windows 11 Search Gets the Bing Off Switch Europe Had

Windows 11’s September 8, 2026 Patch Tuesday update, KB5124008, adds Settings toggles that cut Bing web results and Microsoft Store suggestions from Search. The switches live under Privacy & security, and on many PCs they still stay hidden until a staged flag, or a ViVeTool command, turns the page on.

Europe could already dump Bing from the Search pane in March 2024. Everyone else is getting a pair of opt-out switches that still start in the on position.

KB5124008 Puts Bing Behind a Privacy Toggle

KB5124008 takes 24H2 to build 26100.9445 and 25H2 to 26200.9445. Microsoft’s notes describe a new Privacy and Security Search setting that lets you choose whether web and Microsoft Store suggestions appear next to local hits.

That wording first showed up in the August 27, 2026 optional preview, KB5120998, which moved those same branches to 26100.9278 and 26200.9278. Patch Tuesday folded the preview into the monthly security release. Installing the update still does not guarantee you see the controls, because Microsoft is turning the UI on through a gradual rollout.

The path is Settings > Privacy & security > Search. A section named Show suggested search results holds two independent switches, Web Searches and Microsoft Store. A gear icon at the top right of the Search panel opens the same page.

March Rogers, Partner Director of Design for Windows, put the setting on the record in June while Insiders were still poking at experimental builds. Local files would rank first, he said, and web suggestions could be cut entirely.

What the Web Searches Toggle Cuts

Web Searches is the Bing pipe. Leave it on and Search still asks the web while it looks at apps, files, and settings on the PC. Turn it off and the panel stops waiting on that round-trip, and a query with no local match can return an empty list.

Microsoft Store is a separate sales channel inside the same box. With Store on and web off, a game title you do not have installed can still surface as a Store listing with a Get button, ratings, and screenshots. Flip Store off too and Search will only show what is already on the machine.

THE TWO SEARCH TOGGLES

Results now carry labels that name the source as an app, a setting, a file, a web result, or a Store suggestion. Search for a document and the preview pane can show a thumbnail, the path, the last modified date, and quick actions such as Open and Copy path. Cloud copies from OneDrive can still appear beside local files when they are the stronger match.

The Switch Europe Had in 2024

The new page looks like a usability gift. The calendar says otherwise. Microsoft had already been forced to let EEA customers pull Bing out of Windows Search to meet the Digital Markets Act deadline of March 6, 2024, two years and six months before KB5124008.

On March 7, 2024, Chris Nelson wrote on Microsoft’s EU policy blog that Windows and LinkedIn were designated under the Act, and that the company had uninstall Bing search from Windows using the same remove-app flow everyone already knows. Third parties also received a way to plug their own engines into the taskbar Search box and open results in any browser, not only Edge.

Microsoft had floated that EEA design months earlier. A November 16, 2023 Windows Insider post carried the preview of DMA Search changes for the European Economic Area, which covers EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway. Outside that map, Home users who wanted the same quiet Search box were still looking at Registry values and Group Policy.

FROM DMA TO PATCH TUESDAY

1. November 16, 2023: Microsoft previews EEA Windows changes, including Bing removal from Search and third-party search providers.
2. March 6, 2024: DMA compliance deadline; EEA PCs can uninstall Bing search and stop treating it as a locked-in Search provider.
3. June 2, 2026: A Windows Insider meetup in San Francisco shows a Settings toggle under Privacy & security > Search.
4. June 19, 2026: Insider Experimental build 26300.8697, the first 26H2 build, hides the toggles behind feature IDs.
5. August 27, 2026: Optional KB5120998 puts the Search setting into 24H2 and 25H2 preview builds.
6. September 8, 2026: Mandatory KB5124008 carries the same Search controls into Patch Tuesday, still under a gradual rollout.

The global Settings page is the EEA concession with a friendlier name, not a sudden change of heart about using Search as a Bing front door.

Registry Keys Stood In for Years

Before the privacy page existed, turning off web results meant writing policy into the Registry or Group Policy. Those doors still work on older builds, and they are the reason so many power users shrugged when Microsoft called the toggle new.

THE OLD WAYS TO KILL WEB RESULTS

• Registry DWORD: Create DisableSearchBoxSuggestions set to 1 under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer, then restart.
• Group Policy: On Pro and Enterprise, enable Don’t search the web or display web results in Search under Windows Components, then run gpupdate /force.
• BingSearchEnabled: A DWORD set to 0 under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search was the other common block.
• Cloud content search: Turning off Microsoft account and work or school account under Search permissions only stops cloud files, not Bing web hits.
• EEA DMA mode: Region-gated Windows already exposed Bing uninstall and third-party providers, which is why some people faked an EEA install to get the same controls.

That was not a consumer setting. Home users who did not want to touch regedit lived with web tiles, trending searches, Rewards prompts, and Store pitches stacked above the file they typed to find. The complaint on X in June was the same one people had been repeating for years: they had already done the Registry work, and they wanted Microsoft to admit the box should search the PC first.

Turning Off Web Results Speeds Up Search

Microsoft told testers in June that Search would feel quicker once it stopped waiting on a web round-trip. Hands-on runs on Insider build 26300.8697 backed that up on a dual-core PC with 4GB of RAM, where the panel opened faster after Web Searches was switched off and the old MSN-style home screen was gone.

Open Search with nothing typed and the home screen now shows recent searches instead of an image of the day, a trivia card, trending queries, and a row of suggested apps. That padding was web content, and it used RAM even when you only wanted a local PDF. With history off as well, the empty state shrinks to a few suggested apps and settings.

Typo handling is part of the same pass. Search used to apply forgiveness to Bing queries and then fail to find the app you actually misspelled. In the new ranking, pwerp lands on PowerPoint, utlook finds Outlook, and tskm still finds Task Manager. File search already fires after two characters instead of three, and substring matching can find a long file name from a chunk in the middle.

Local files are prioritized in the new search updates. Also if you want you can turn off web suggestions entirely.

March Rogers, Partner Director of Design, Microsoft, on X

The next day he pointed at the exact page.

https://x.com/marchr/status/2066904743914422730

A search for “installed” now prefers the Installed apps settings page over a generic support article. That is the local-first ranking Rogers described, and it holds even if you leave web results on. The speed gain people notice is still the Web Searches switch, because the UI no longer stalls on a Bing response before it paints what is already indexed.

Why Many PCs Still Hide the Toggles

KB5124008 puts the code on the PC. Microsoft still decides when the page appears. Controlled Feature Rollout is the same remote switch used for other shell changes, so two identical 25H2 machines can disagree about whether Show suggested search results exists.

If the update is in and the section is missing, testers have been forcing the flags with ViVeTool. On the August and September code the Search pair is 62353331 and 62762248, run from an admin Command Prompt after unpacking the build from the ViVeTool GitHub releases page, then a restart. A wider bundle, 61161244,61754985,62353331,62762248, has been used when the layout appears without the two toggles. Microsoft does not support that tool, and feature IDs can go stale once a change is wired in for good.

Insiders had an even longer ID list on 26300.8697 in June (61267302, 61344081, 61482515, 61532758, 61760679), with 48433719 as a fallback. The Experimental channel later gained a Feature flags page under Windows Insider Program settings, which can flip Refined Windows Search without a command line. Retail 24H2 and 25H2 PCs do not get that page.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The code: KB5124008 includes the Search setting for 24H2 and 25H2, matching the August preview notes.
• The path: Settings > Privacy & security > Search > Show suggested search results.
• The defaults: Web suggestions stay available unless you turn them off; this is an opt-out, not a new local-only default.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Who sees it: No public map of which devices have the staged flag on after September 8.
• The August bugs: KB5120998 reset mouse cursor personalization on some PCs and was tied to wallpaper resets; whether KB5124008 closed those bugs is not settled in Microsoft’s Search notes.

Home and Pro PCs still on 24H2 also face a calendar Microsoft printed in the August notes: those editions reach end of updates on October 13, 2026. The Search toggles are arriving on a branch that, for a lot of consumer SKUs, does not have a long life left.

Other Bing Doors That Stay Open

Killing web results in Search does not uninstall Bing, does not remove Edge, and does not change Copilot anywhere else in the shell. It also does not stop Windows from offering Store apps in Search unless you flip that second switch. Leave both on and the cleaner home screen still sits on top of the same providers.

In the EEA, the more interesting leftover is choice rather than absence. Microsoft published third-party search in the taskbar box so another engine can register as a Windows Search provider, auto-enable on install, and open results in the default browser. That API is the DMA version of this story. The rest of the world got the off switch first, not a picker.

Search highlights, the rotating Bing-fed icon in the taskbar search box, remain a different control on the same Privacy & security > Search page. Cloud content search is another one. People who only toggle Web Searches and then wonder why a highlight still winks at them are looking at a stack of switches Microsoft never put on one line.

On a PC that has KB5124008 and a live Show suggested search results section, turning both new switches off is the closest Windows 11 has come to a local finder. The empty result for a name that is not on disk is the proof. Until Microsoft’s staged flag reaches the device, that proof is still a missing page, and the Bing results people wanted gone are still the ones Search draws first.