Windows 11 is still an emerging platform, so users may see changes to its UI as time passes. Some of these changes are not always appreciated, and you may have noticed that your taskbar search icon has become a search bar.
If so, read on. Here’s how to get the Windows 11 search bar back to the search icon.
What happened to the Windows 11 taskbar search icon?
If you’ve been keeping Windows 11 updated, you may have seen your taskbar search icon change to a larger bar-shaped icon.
This change happened automatically and at the time of writing, cannot be changed via the Settings menu.
Thankfully, there’s a catch-all solution to many of these design changes.
Restoring Features with ViVeTool
ViVeTool is what we’ll be using to convert this feature back, and it can be found on ViVeTool’s GitHub page. To use this program properly, it needs to be extracted to the correct location: System32.
Before proceeding make sure you read about System32 and how important it is to your system. ViVeTool is a safe program, but it’s good to know what you’re getting into before getting involved.
When you’re ready, extract the downloaded ZIP for ViVeTool to your System32 folder.
How to Restore the Windows 11 Search Bar Icon
Begin by launching an administrator-level Terminal window. To do this, right-click on the Start Menu icon, and hit Windows Terminal – Admin. Make sure you clicked Yes in the User Account Control window.
You’ll know it’s successful if you see the message Set feature configuration successfully.
Then, all you have to do is restart. Your Search icon should be back to its original style.
Change Features, Even If You Don’t Want Them
At the end of the day, this may very well be a temporary fix. Microsoft may include a toggle in the future, or add further changes that break the functionality of this tool.
While this can be annoying, as long as people have been using Windows, there will be people making modifications like ViVeTool to give control back to the user.
Computers have become a major part of our modern life. All the files you need for both your personal and work life are stored in their digital archive. But as these files pile up, it may be too much for the default Windows search function to find what you need. This can be frustrating and affect your productivity.
If your PC is full of files and folders and Windows Search isn’t enough to find what you’re looking for, it’s best to use a third-party search tool. Below are some of the best desktop search tools for Windows 11 that will make your life easier.
Everything is one of the most popular desktop search tools that allows users to quickly find files and folders by their name. The program is easy to install and does not hog storage resources. It also has a straightforward user interface. So, even if you are not very technical, you will not be annoyed using it.
Furthermore, it features quick file indexing and searching, making finding tons of files as simple as it’s supposed to be. It doesn’t use much of your computer’s RAM while searching, so there’s no need to worry about slowing down your computer. Finally, you can easily share files with others while receiving real-time updates.
grepWin may look like your average search tool, but this program allows you to use regular expressions for deep and thorough searches. A regular expression is a type of advanced search that looks for specific patterns instead of words and phrases. This works well for users who file their documents using similar strings of characters because it pulls out all the files they need in one search instead of typing each file name separately. can help.
If you are not familiar with regular expressions, the program provides a quick tutorial to familiarize yourself with it. In addition to using an advanced search method, it also allows you to limit your search by file size, type, etc., so that you eliminate files that don’t fit the parameters, thus, narrowing your search. Makes it faster.
Copernic desktop search
If you need a desktop search tool that goes beyond files on your computer, Copernic Desktop Search is an excellent choice. The free version allows you to index over 119 different file types, while the paid version offers a thorough search that includes Microsoft Office, Outlook, cloud services, PDFs, and more. Additionally, you can search for files on every drive on your computer with minimal latency.
This search tool provides in-depth search in your system files using Refine feature. The program also supports boolean operators like AND, NOT, OR, PASS etc., which makes searching easy.