If it opened on the default browser it would be several times less infuriating, but clicking on anything by mistake and then waiting for Edge to open with all the prompts because you never use it makes me furious
There is a reg key to add that disables bing search.
What I fucking hate, is that I exclusively use the start menu to start apps I’ve installed, but typing in the name of an app doesn’t show the installed app at all, just fucking ads. They literally took away the only functionality of the start menu unless I do a very intuitive method of reverting it.
Ha, what a delightful way to share! Figured it would be easy enough to Internet search, but this way, others reading the thread will be more inclined to enable it when it is just right in the conversation.
Edit: Holy crap, this finally got rid of the weird start menu lag where it used to be “hit win key, type fir, launch firefox” to “hit win key…start menu freezes with no typing, a second modal window floats above it, sometimes in arbitrary locations on the screen (likely because I told Edge to not run in the background ever so it always cold-starts) then “fir” appears there, or sometimes “ir” or sometimes “r” or sometimes nothing.” Just to run a program.
For anyone wondering, there are tools out there that will help you debloat Windows 10 and 11 and remove things like these obnoxious ads in the Start Menu. I did this last year on Windows 11 and even after countless updates, the debloating has remained. The tool I used also had an option to permanently “pause” Windows Updates too, but I didn’t choose that for the sake of security updates.
It’s terrible what Microsoft has done to the OS, overall, but for those of us who have to use it (and have control over the computer), we have this as an option to make the experience a little better, at least.
I can’t remember the exact tool I used but I highly recommend it for anyone dealing with this. There are many tools that will do this that are available and can be found by just Googling Windows debloater tool.
There’s so many tools to do it, too. It’s kind of upsetting how many independent devs are investing their time towards removing this garbage instead of literally anything else.