General Enable or Disable Search Indexing in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable search indexing for all users in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Indexing the content of your PC helps you get faster results when your searching it for files, emails, or other local content.

The search index only includes your selected locations by default. These locations can be filtered for what file types (extensions), file properties, and file contents you want indexed.

You can choose to use Classic or Enhanced search indexing mode for where your PC will search for files.

The index uses the Windows Search service and runs as the Searchindexer.exe process in the background. The index will automatically rebuild and update for changes made to the included locations since the last index rebuild to increase search result accuracy.

By default, the search indexer backoff feature will reduce indexing speed while rebuilding the index when there is user activity, and will automatically continue at full speed when no user activity is detected.

Reference:

If you prefer to search without using the index, then you could completely disable search indexing. If you disable search indexing, searches will take longer to finish, but search results will always be up to date and accurate.

If you do a lot of file content searching, then you may not want to disable search indexing since it will take a lot longer to search file contents without the index.

You must be signed in as an administrator to enable or disable search indexing.

EXAMPLE: Search indexing disabled

This is the default setting.

1 Open Services (services.msc).

2 Double click/tap on the Windows Search service to open its properties page. (see screenshot below)


3 Select Automatic (Delayed Start) in the Startup type drop menu, and click/tap on Apply. (see screenshot below)


4 Click/tap on Start. (see screenshot below)


5 When "Servicing status" shows as Running, click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)







1 Open Services (services.msc).

2 Double click/tap on the Windows Search service to open its properties page. (see screenshot below)


3 Select Disabled in the Startup type drop menu, and click/tap on Apply. (see screenshot below)


4 Click/tap on Stop. (see screenshot below)


5 When "Servicing status" shows as Stopped, click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)







1 Open Windows Terminal (Admin), and select Command Prompt.

2 Do step 3 (enable) or step 4 (disable) below for what you want.

This is the default setting.

5 You can now close Windows Terminal (Admin) if you like.


That's it,
Shawn Brink