Unfucking Windows For Fun and Profit

There was a time, not that long ago, when you’d buy a new computer and the first thing you did with it was fire something up to see how fast it was, instead of clicking “No thanks” on a bazillion offers for cloud storage and anti-virus and other subscriptions you probably don’t need.

Setting up a new PC (or Mac) these days really makes me miss the days when Windows was a piece of software that you bought every few years instead of an opportunity for enormous corporations to sell you services that are confusing and often unnecessary. Business customers still get to buy a service, if they’re big enough to support the necessary infrastructure, but for people who buy computers at Best Buy, Microcenter, or Amazon, there’s no easy way to opt out.

The good news is that you can do a handful of simple things that will make Windows work for you, instead of for Microsoft.

De-Bingify the Start Menu

One of my favorite features of modern Windows is the ability to press the Windows key to open the Start Menu and type the name of the application I want to launch. It’s quick and easy, and lets me get to the applications I need without clicking through a million menus.

That was how it worked until the newer editions of Windows 10 and 11 also began to search Bing from the Start Menu. It’s a terrible feature, instead of doing the thing I want to do—open an application—the Bing search often intervenes, jumping to a web search result for that application name instead of opening the application on my computer. If I’m trying to open Excel on my PC, I already know what it is, I already have it, and I just want to start working.

The only possible reason I can imagine that the Windows team would add this terrible feature is to dramatically increase search traffic for Bing. I imagine the conversation in Redmond that started with “We need to get our Bing search volume up somehow…” ended everyone in the meeting high-fiving each other and millions of Windows users accidentally searching Bing every day.

It’s easy to get rid of though, if you don’t mind delving into some obscure system settings using regedit. Regedit is a tool that lets you change Windows settings that aren’t exposed in the UI, like this one. This is safe and easy, but don’t go poking around in Regedit in places you don’t understand, or you can mess up your computer.

First, open regedit, but pressing the Windows key and typing regedit and make sure you launch the application instead of the Bing search one last time. Windows will ask if you want to let regedit make changes to your device—you do. Then browse to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer. (You may need to create the Explorer key. To do that, right click on the Windows folder in the left pane of Regedit and select “New > Key”. Name the new key Explorer.) Right click on the Explorer folder and create a new 32-bit DWORD value called DisableSearchBoxSuggestions and set its value to 1.

Once you log out of Windows and log back in (or reboot), Bing will be excised from your Start Menu search permanently. For the record, this is the first thing I do on every new computer I buy or build.

Stop Windows From Adding Crap To Your Start Menu

The Microsoft Store—Windows’ version of an app store—likes to put shortcuts to popular apps in the Start Menu as a way to drive people into their app ecosystem. Obviously, this is the kind of fun feature that most people would turn off it was appropriately labeled, so Microsoft didn’t do that. If you don’t want to see those apps on your PC, stopping them is as easy as flipping a switch in the Settings app, but you have to know the right one. To find it, open Settings and search for “Suggested content”, clicking the “Show me suggested content in the Settings app” option, and toggling that option to Off in the window that opens. While you’re at it, go to Personalization > Start and uncheck the Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more.

Turn Off the Stuff You Never Use

Windows links services you’ll probably never use all over Windows. There are widgets that go to MSN on the lock screen, search panes that go to Bing on the Taskbar, more widgets that go to MSN on the Taskbar, recommended apps in your Start Menu, and more. It’s safe to disable all of the widgets—there are options in Personalization > Taskbar > Widgets and Personalization > Lock Screen > Get fun facts, tips, tricks and more on your lock screen. You can disable the Search pane on the Taskbar by going to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar and unchecking Search. Don’t worry, we’ll replace the default Windows search with something better in just a moment.

This goes for Microsoft’s push into generative AI—Copilot—as well. With the exception of the code-generation and cleanup tools sold through Github, I find it to be pretty useless for my day to day. Removing it used to be a significant hassle, but on the latest versions of Windows 11, you can simply right-click the Copilot icon in the Start menu and select “Uninstall”.

Ditch Services From Your OS Vendor

This one applies to both Mac and Windows folks. If you’re paying money for services that give you more storage for cloud files or emails, consider using services that aren’t provided by your OS vendor. Operating system companies like Apple and Microsoft tend to provide better support to their platforms, as a way to lock users in. Third-party providers are incentivized to provide top-tier support to all platforms, which means you’ll be able to more easily move to another operating system, should you choose to in the future.

• This means you probably want to use Dropbox instead of OneDrive or iCloud Drive

• It’s generally pretty easy to access different webmails on other platforms, but consider using Proton Mail or even Gmail instead of Outlook.com or iCloud Mail

A Few Bonus Tools to Make Windows Work Better

Everything is a whole PC filename search tool that provides results instantly. I use it on all of my Windows machines in place of the slow, unwieldy default Windows search. It’s worth mentioning that it doesn’t search inside text files, you’ll need to use Windows search to get that, but if you’re good about naming your files consistently, it makes it easy to find a file or folder at a quick keypress.

I love the Microsoft Phone Link app. It connects to your phone and lets you send and receive text messages from your PC. It works for both Android and iOS users (iOS users have limited support for group texts and iMessages, but it works fine for 1 to 1 texting or iMessaging). It’s preinstalled with Windows 11, so you probably already have it.

Don’t Worry About Third-Party Anti-Virus and VPNs

The tools that are integrated with Windows consistently rate near the top of the pack for anti-virus and anti-malware these days. There’s no reason to buy third-party solutions for these services, unless you have very specific needs or your IT department requires them. The same goes for VPN software. Unless you have a specific need for VPNs, there’s no reason to bother with them.

What’s Coming Next Week?

I hope these tips and applications were helpful for you! I expect this type of tip to be an ongoing conversation, so if there’s something about your devices that bugs you or if you have a favorite tip you’d like to share, please drop me a line and I’ll add it to the next roundup.

Next week, we’re going to talk about the Steam Deck, and why it’s a good example of the value of a relentless focus on the end user’s experience. Til then, thanks for reading and as always, if you find this newsletter helpful and/or informative, please consider subscribing and if you’ve already signed up, share the newsletter with a friend! sharing it with a friend, or chucking me a couple of bucks each month as a thanks.