On Windows 10, recently a Microsoft Edge search bar started appearing on the desktop.
If you click the 3 dots menu there is an option to "Auto-launch search bar" which you can turn off and then close the bar. One would think this would disable it, but on restart the search bar comes back.
How can I disable this desktop search bar so it doesn't appear even after a reboot?
You can disable the search bar by making a registry edit. So far I haven't found a way to turn this off without making a registry edit (there are some old tutorials about a pop-up dialog appearing that would allow turning it off permanently but that dialog no longer seems to appear)
The WebWidgetAllowed value controls this.
Open regedit. The WebWidgetAllowed key is located at Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge
For me the Edge folder and key didn't exist, so I needed to go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft right click on Microsoft folder and choose New -> Key, and then type Edge.
Then I right-clicked on the Edge folder I just created and chose New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value and typed WebWidgetAllowed for the name. The default value is 0 which is false so I didn't need to change that.
Then saved and closed regedit and rebooted and the desktop search bar no longer appears.
