If Windows 11 is automatically adding new locations to the search index, here’s how to remove all of them with a single button click.
Quick steps: Open the Settings app, go to “Privacy & security” > “Search“, turn off “Automatically find additional relevant locations“, and click the “Remove” button under it.
Windows 11 added a new option called “Automatically find additional relevant locations” to the Search feature. As you can guess from the name, when enabled (it is enabled by default), Windows automatically adds new locations to the search index so that you can better search for your files and folders. While this is a good feature, if you don’t need it, you can easily disable the automatic indexing of relevant locations. However, once you disable it, you should manually remove all the automatically indexed locations. Otherwise, Windows 11 will keep indexing them. The good thing is that, instead of removing each entry one at a time, you can bulk-remove all automatically added search index locations using the Settings app. In this quick and easy Windows how-to guide, I will show you how to do it. Let’s get started.
Before You Start
- You should be running build 26300.9032 (v26H2) or higher to follow this guide.
Remove All Automatically Added Search Index Locations in Windows 11
The first thing, open the Settings app using the “Windows key + I” shortcut. Once it opens, go to the “Privacy & security” tab on the left sidebar of the Settings app. In the right panel under the “Windows Permissions” section, click the “Search” option.
On the Search page, click and expand the “Find my files” section. Next, turn OFF the “Automatically find additional relevant locations” toggle. Next, click the “Remove” button next to “Remove all automatically added search folders”.
Note: The “Remove” button is greyed out until you turn OFF the “Automatically find additional relevant locations” toggle. If you don’t see this option, you are not using build 26300.9032 (v26H2) or higher. You might have to update your OS.
The above action removes all automatically added locations from the search index. You will see a checkmark once the removal is done. You can close the Settings app at this point, and you are done.
Write down below any questions or comments you have. I’ll respond as quickly as possible.
Thank you,
Vamsi.
