How to Disable and Clear Search History in Windows 11

You may want to clear the search history in Windows 11 if you share your PC with other family members. This is especially actual when you all work under the same account, be it a local one or a Microsoft Account. The search history in Windows 11 includes entries for local files, online searches, and File Explorer search data. Follow this guide to learn how to remove those.

Windows 11 includes a dedicated app to perform your searches. You can open it by clicking on the search icon or box in the taskbar, by using the Win + S keyboard shortcut. Or simply by typing in the Start menu - this will redirect you to Windows Search anyway.

When you enter a query, the search results display a mix of local files, Store apps, and web results, including content from Bing. 💡 The latter can be disabled to make it return only local files. Regardless of the path you come to the search pane, it lists your recent queries.

Moreover, in case of a Microsoft Account, the Windows Search will also list terms from queries you made in the browser! Bing will save them for you and push to Windows 11. Let's review how to properly remove this data.

To clear Windows Search history, you need to perform these three steps: Remove your recent queries from Bing, then remove your local searches,  and finally clear File Explorer search terms.

Clear Web Search History from Bing

To remove your recent web searches from Windows Search, do the following.

1. Open your browser to the following web page: https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/web-search.
2. Sign in if prompted with your Microsoft Account credentials.
3. On the next page, go to the "Search history" section. It contains everything you have been earlier searched for.
4. Scroll down the list and click on the Clear all activities link.
5. In the confirmation dialog, click on the Clear button, and you are good to go.

That's how you clear you web search history.

Now, it is time for local search data.

Clear Windows 11 Search History

To remove local search history in Windows 11, do the following.

1. Open the Settings app (Win + I).
2. Click on Privacy & security on the left.
3. On the right, scroll down to Windows permissions and then click on Search permissions.
4. On the next page, click on the Clear device search history under the History category.

Congrats, after doing the step 1 and step 2 of this tutorial your Windows 11 search history will be clear.

It is worth mentioning that you can also clear local Windows Search data from PowerShell. Let's review this method.

Clear Search History with PowerShell

1. Right-click the Start button in the taskbar, and select Terminal from the menu.
2. In the PowerShell tab of Terminal, type the following command, and press Enter: Get-AppPackage -Name MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS | Reset-AppxPackage.
3. Wait for the command to finish.
4. You can now close Terminal if you want.

The command will reset Windows search history, similarly to the Settings option reviewed in the previous chapter.

Finally, the Search dashboard is not the only place where the operating system accumulates your queries. File Explorer also saves your terms after you use it to find files. So you may be interested in removing those lines.

Remove Search History from File Explorer

To clear search history in Window 11 File Explorer, do the following.

1. Start the File Explorer app (Win + E), and click on the button with three dots in the toolbar.
2. Select Options from the menu.
3. On the General tab in the Folder Options dialog, click the Clear button next to the Clear File Explorer history text.
4. This will remove the whole search history in File Explorer.

Alternatively, you can use a Registry tweak method. Everything you type in the search box is stored in the Registry under the WordWheelQuery key. You can remove its values manually.

Clear File Explorer Search History in the Registry

To remove searches from File Explorer with a Registry tweak, follow these steps.

1. Open the Registry Editor by pressing Win + R, and entering regedit in the Run box.
2. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WordWheelQuery. You can paste this path to the address bar of regedit.
3. Select all values to the right of the WordWheelQuery key, right-click the selection, and select Delete from the context menu.
4. You can now close the Registry editor.

That's it. But if you prefer some automation and not impressed with manual editing of the Registry, here are two quick solutions for you. First of all, you can use a special REG file. And secondly, there is a special console command that you can use in batch files.

Delete File Explorer search history with a reg file

Download the clear file explorer search history.reg file from this link, and extract it from the ZIP archive to any folder of your choice. Double-click it, click YES in the User Account Control confirmation, and then click on YES again in the Registry editor prompt.

The stored search entries will be instantly removed from the File Explorer. That's much faster than digging the keys manually.

The console command

To achieve the same, you can run the following command:

reg delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WordWheelQuery /va /f

To run this command, press Win + X and select Terminal from the menu. Then type or copy-paste the command in the PowerShell (Ctrl + Shift + 1) or Command Prompt (Ctrl + Shift + 2) tab. Finally, simply typing cmd.exe in the Run dialog (Win + R) will open the console window for you.

In fact, you can run this command directly from the Run dialog. It will clear the search history from File Explorer properly, but you will not see any output. So we use Terminal for our convenience.

Permanently Disable File Explorer Web Search

To disable the web search feature in File Explorer and its saving to the cloud, do the following.

1. Start with right-clicking the Start button and selecting "Run" from the context menu. In the "Run" dialog box, type "regedit" and press Enter. This will launch the Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to the following key path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer. If the "Explorer" folder is not there, create a new key by right-clicking the "Windows" folder and selecting "New > Key".
3. Within the "Explorer" key, right-click an empty space on the right side and choose "New > DWORD (32-Bit) value". Name this new value "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions".
4. Double-click the newly created value and set its data to "1".
5. Finally, sign out of Windows 11 and then sign back in for the changes to take effect. This will disable stop File Explorer from using online services for your searches.

⬇️ You may want to save your time a little by using these REG files.

• Download the provided ZIP archive containing two REG files.
• Extract the REG files to a location of your preference.
• Double-click the "Disable Web Search.reg" file to implement the change.

This will prevent Windows 11 from showing online links alongside local files in search results. An undo option is included, named "Enable Web Search.reg".

Using command prompt

If you prefer automation via some batch file, or user script, you can use the following command to stop File Explorer from injecting online search history in your local searches.

reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer /v DisableSearchBoxSuggestions /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Run this command in Terminal, PowerShell, or pure command prompt. It will modify the Registry for you.

This method is compatible with all editions of Windows 11, including Home edition. Users of Windows 11 Pro, Enterprise, or certain Education editions may utilize the Local Group Policy Editor application ("gpedit.msc") for the same purpose.

Disable File Explorer Search History in Group Policy

To disable the display of recent searches within the File Explorer search bar in Windows 11, users can go with the Local Group Policy Editor.

1. Press the Windows key and R simultaneously, then type "gpedit.msc" into the Run dialog box.
2. Within the editor, navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > File Explorer.
3. Locate the policy setting labeled "Turn off display of recent search entries in the File Explorer search box" and double-click it.
4. Enable this policy by selecting the "Enabled" option.
5. Finally, confirm the changes by clicking "Apply" and then "OK".

That's it.

One more place to completely remove your search traces is the AppData folder.

Delete Recent Files from AppData folder

1. Open File Explorer (Win + E), and paste the following path into the address bar: %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent. Then press Enter.
2. Select all the files you see in this folder (you can press Ctrl + A for that), and then press Del to remove those.
3. The files will be sent to your Recycle Bin if you have it enabled. Otherwise they will be deleted.

In addition, you may be interested in removing items from the Recommended section in the Start menu.

Clear Recommended Items from the Start menu

1. Open the Start menu by clicking the Windows logo in the taskbar or with the Win key.
2. Right-click an entry you want to remove in the list of Recommended section.
3. Select Remove from list.
4. The item will be removed from the list.

Remove all items at once

1. To remove all items, open the Settings app (Win + I) and go to Personalization > Start.
2. Switch off the toggle option named "Show recently opened items in Start, Jump Lists, and File Explorer." The recent files will be removed from Start.
3. Enable the option back if you want Windows to continue to track the recent files in Start.
4. To remove all app icons and not only files from Recommended, disable and re-enable these two options: Show most used apps and Show recently added apps.

That's it.