Edge

Hi Tim, have you got Edge set as your default browser? If so, are you able to change it and reboot?

 

The search bar says it IS the default. See if you can try to set the one you want. In Win 11 type 'default' in search.

 

You only get those icons on the search bar when Edge is the default browser

 

Looks like you are stuck with it pro tem. I'll come back if I can find anything but not even too sure atm how my own search bar gets changed as I had the Edge one for a while and can't even get it back now!

 

If it’s a case of removing the icons from search have you tried right clicking the search bar>Search & deselecting show search highlights?

 

That works too.

 

Yeah, that's the Windows 11 built-in taskbar search widget, it seems to be hard wired to Bing. Searches from that widget seem to use and launch your default browser. This is supposedly a list of serach engines to choose from the Taskbar settings.../Privacy and Security/Search permissions. It seems that this search is tied into the OS to search your files.

This is similar to the behaviour that MS introduced by building in Internet Explorer into the desktop OS in earlier incarnations of Windows, until an anti-trust ruling meant they had to revise that built-in: United States v. Microsoft Corp. - Wikipedia. Guessing MS are trying to squash other search engines in favour of theirs and their chatbots (Co-Pilot, etc.).

 

Go into msconfig, or services, and stop edge from starting at boot up, then reboot. Have no idea if that will work, but it is what I would try.