Enable or disabling the Windows Search Indexing Features in Windows 11

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The post provides a detailed guide to utilizing Windows Search Indexing in Windows 11, including enabling, disabling, and adjusting indexing options. Users can perform these functions through Windows settings or via the command prompt. This post also explains how Indexing enhances search speeds within specific folders or across the PC by creating local indexes of…

This post shows students and new users steps to turn On or Off Windows Search Indexing in Windows 11. Windows has a built-in search feature that allows you to search for documents from a particular folder or the entire PC.

Windows indexes those content on the local computer to return faster results when users search for files, emails, or other local content. There are two indexing options in Windows 11: Classic and Enhanced indexing options.

The Classic indexing option will index content in the user profile folders, including Documents, Pictures, Music, and the Desktop.

Users can add additional locations using the Classic indexing option to include additional content.

By default, the Enhanced indexing option indexes the user computer’s entire contents, all hard drives, and partitions, including your libraries and desktop. The indexer uses the Windows Search service and runs the Searchindexer.exe process in the background.

How to turn off Windows Search indexing in Windows 11

As mentioned above, Windows Search indexes content on the user’s computer to provide faster and improved results. A search indexer is a service that runs in the background.

You can search Windows without using its indexer. However, you may not get faster or enhanced results if the Windows indexer is turned off.

Below is how to turn off or disable the Windows Search indexer in Windows 11.

First, open the Services console, then locate the Windows Search service. Click on the Windows Search service name to open.

Click the Stop button on the Windows Search Properties window to stop the service.

Select Disabled in the Startup type drop menu, and click on Apply.

You can close out the Services console.

When you stop the Windows Search service, it will also stop Windows Search indexing. As you can see in the image below, the Indexing status should indicate the service is Not running.

How to enable Windows Search indexing in Windows 11

If Windows Search indexing is disabled, reverse the steps above to re-enable it. Open the Services console, then locate the Windows Search service, and double-click to open.

Select Automatic (Delayed Start) for the Startup type drop-down menu on the Windows Search Properties window, then click the Apply button.

Also, click the Start button to start the Windows Search service immediately.

Windows Search Indexing should be re-enabled.

How to enable or disable Windows Search from the command prompt

The same steps above can be done using the Command Prompt.

To do that, open the Command Prompt as administrator.

Run the commands below to enable Windows Search Indexing.

sc config "wsearch" start=delayed-auto && sc start "wsearch"

To turn it off, run the commands below.

sc stop "wsearch" && sc config "wsearch" start=disabled​

That should do it!

Conclusion:

This post showed you how to turn Windows Search Indexing on or off in Windows 11. Please use the comment form below if you find any errors above or have something to add.

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One response to “Enable or disabling the Windows Search Indexing Features in Windows 11”

  1. RickyO Avatar
    RickyO

    I would break this into two articles.
    Also, there are countless typos and grammatical errors which need to be corrected.

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