Windows 11’s taskbar search might finally use Google and Chrome if that’s what you want

New flags spotted in the latest version of Edge Canary suggest Microsoft wants to hand-off Windows 11's search box onto your default browser of choice.

A number of new flags have been discovered in Microsoft Edge that suggest that Microsoft is working on allowing Windows 11’s taskbar search to open in your default browser and search engine, instead of defaulting to Edge and Bing. This is behavior that has been available in the European Economic Area (EEA) for quite some time, and now it might be coming to everyone, reports Windows Latest.

First spotted by @Leopeva64 on X, in the latest build of Edge Canary there’s now a number of flags that are designed to configure how Windows behaves when it comes to handing off a taskbar search query to the browser. In non-EEA markets, Windows is set to open Edge and use Bing whenever you type an internet search query into the search box, regardless of what browser you have set as default.

Here are the new flags that were spotted in Edge Canary:

• msExplicitLaunchNonBingDSE
• msExplicitLaunchNonBingDSEAndNonEdgeDB
• msExplicitLaunchNonEdgeDB
• msWSBLaunchNonBingDSE
• msWSBLaunchNonBingDSEAndNonEdgeDB
• msWSBLaunchNonEdgeDB

It's likely that "WSB" stands for "Windows Search Box" and "DSE" means Default Search Engine.

If these new flags are anything to go by, it looks like Microsoft will give users the choice to switch which browser and search engine is used in the hand-off from the taskbar search box. If you have Firefox set as your default browser, and use Yahoo as your default search engine, Windows will respect that choice and open Firefox with your search query already inserted into Yahoo.

Of course, as these flags are currently only available in Edge Canary, they may never ship and could just be an experiment. Still, it’s interesting to see Microsoft toying with options that would make using Windows 11 less user hostile for people who don’t want to use Microsoft’s defaults.

I suspect there are millions of Windows 11 users in the world that don’t want to use Edge or Bing, and so don’t use Windows 11’s search pane as a result. Having this important system UI finally respect your default browser and search engine choice is a big first step towards finally respecting the users choices.