Search Suggested Action in Windows 11 supports Chrome, here’s how to enable it

With Windows 11 Build 25247, Microsoft introduced a new Suggestion Action that allows you to search online for a selected text. The feature is limited to those who lives in the US, and is locked down to Edge. But it was quickly discovered that it may work with any browser, and has several other options. All of them are hidden, but you can enable them with ViveTool.

If you aren't familiar with Suggested Actions, here are some details. It is a new feature of Windows 11 first introduced with build 25115. For a specific selected text data, Windows shows a tooltip that allows you to do something useful with the selection. Initially, there were two actions, make a call with a phone number and create an event for a date. So, if you select phone or date (and Windows 11 recognize them), it will show you the appropriate prompt.

Starting in Windows 11 Build 25247, Microsoft added one more Suggested Action: Online search. You can select a text portion on a web page, in Notepad, or in any other app, and you will see a prompt to find more about the selection online. The official announcement says it will search with Bing in Edge. Actually, Microsoft is working on advanced version of this suggested action that supports other installed browsers.

Let's see how to enable it.

Enable Search Suggested Action in Windows 11

1. Download ViveTool from its official GitHub page and extract its ZIP archive to the c:\vivetool folder.
2. Right-click Start and select Terminal(Admin) from the menu.
3. In the elevated terminal, use either PowerShell or Command Prompt tab to type and execute one of following commands.
   1. The default look without Chrome icon: c:\vivetool\vivetool /enable /id:41539325.
   2. Search with Chrome support: c:\vivetool\vivetool /enable /id:41539325 /variant:1.
   3. The same as #2 but with different text label: c:\vivetool\vivetool /enable /id:41539325 /variant:2.
   4. Variant 3 which is similar to the default one: c:\vivetool\vivetool /enable /id:41539325 /variant:3.
   5. Variant 4 says "Search copied text" and doesn't show browser icons: c:\vivetool\vivetool /enable /id:41539325 /variant:4.
4. Restart Windows 11.
5. Open some text file in Notepad and select a word. You will now see the online search prompt.

You are done.

It is easy to undo the change by running the following command as Administrator:

c:\vivetool\vivetool /disable /id:41539325

Finally, you can completely disable Suggested Actions in Windows 11 by following steps in this tutorial.

Thanks to @PhantomOfEarth

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