Sudden appearance of Edge Search Bar

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My default browser is Firefox.  I NEVER use Edge and my Win10 22H2 system is configured so that Edge does not autostart at startup/signon.

When starting the system today I was greeted with this –

WTF!!  I used process explorer to terminate all running instances of Edge.  How do I prevent this nuisance from happening again?

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Don’t use Windows!?

Unfortunately Windows updates sometimes roll out “new” stuff, like Copilot.
Open Edge and go to settings, System and Performance, System.
Make sure “startup boost” and “continue running” are off.

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

bradam

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Thanks for the advice but I have seen in the past that when Edge starts it makes changes to the system for its own benefit.  For example, it will create an entry in the HKCU Run Key to start itself at signon.

So I am hoping to find a different way to disable that Edge Search Bar nag from appearing again that does not require that I start Edge.

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“Turn off search bar” (shown at the bottom of your screenshot).

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I don’t even know why that darn thing appeared! For some unknown reason Edge started by itself.

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These registry entries prevent the Edge search bar (it’s called WebWidget) from starting/appearing.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge]
"WebWidgetAllowed"=dword:00000000
"WebWidgetIsEnabledOnStartup"=dword:00000000

And this one prevents Edge from auto-launching when Windows starts (i.e. it stop Edge from creating that run key in HKCU.)

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\MicrosoftEdge\Main]
"AllowPrelaunch"=dword:00000000

I set these quite some time back and, so far, they’ve never been changed/overwritten during an Edge update.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Lars220, bradam

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I see now that the Edge search bar intrusion occurred for other AW members several months ago.  It hadn’t infringed upon me until today.  And the nag popped up even though there was no entry in the HKCU Run key to start Edge.   Perhaps an Edge update triggered the nag.

I had forgotten about the Edge search bar info on AW since it hadn’t affected me up to now.  Although I am aware of the entry available through local group policy to prevent automatic launching I was unable to find anything else specific to the search bar in gpedit.msc.  Thank you for the registry keys.

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According to Microsoft’s Microsoft Edge – Policies:

The latest version of Microsoft Edge includes the following policies. You can use these policies to configure how Microsoft Edge runs in your organization.

The two WebWidget policies are listed as Enable the Search bar (WebWidgetAllowed) and Allow the Search bar at Windows startup (WebWidgetIsEnabledOnStartup) and apply to both Computer Configuration and User Configuration under Group Policy.

However, just like you, I don’t see them on my system?!?!

Note the organization part of the above quote. That “probably” means those policies only appear in Group Policy for business users of MS Edge.

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BTW, both WebWidgetAllowed and WebWidgetIsEnabledOnStartup contain the following caveat – “It is currently supported but will become obsolete in a future release.”

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Well that’s just great!

I checked the list at the link I posted above and discovered, in typical Microsoft fashion, they changed the name from WebWidget to Searchbar.

So the new registry entries to disable it are now:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge]
"SearchbarAllowed"=dword:00000000
"SearchbarIsEnabledOnStartup"=dword:00000000

Next thing ya know, they’ll probably change the name to something like CoPilotBar or some such.

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That’s unbelievable! How tough would it have been for them to at least reference the new policies from the ones that have the deprecation warning?

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Another of the annoying “dribble” changes.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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n0ads wrote:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge]

I don’t have this registry key on my Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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Alex5723 wrote:

I don’t have this registry key on my Windows 10 Pro 22H2

If you don’t install the Edge policy templates then the registry key and data need to be manually created.  If you use the templates then gpedit.msc will handle the registry.

In a test Win 10 22H2 VM I installed and used the Edge policy templates.  You can see both the local group policy editor and regedit results here –

2 users thanked author for this post.

Lars220, Alex5723

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