In this blog post, I’ll demonstrate a Settings Catalog policy to hide Search box on Windows 11 taskbar using Intune. By default, Windows 11 displays a search box on the taskbar, making it easy to find applications and files.
However, if you prefer a cleaner taskbar with more space for pinned application icons, you can choose to hide or disable the search box. Even after hiding it, you can still search using the Start menu or the Windows key + S shortcut.
To manually hide the search box, navigate to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar. Under Taskbar items, find the Search drop-down menu and select Hide.
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Hide Search box from Taskbar Intune Policy
As shown in the previous section, you can manually hide the search box from the taskbar on a Windows 11 computer, but this method is only practical for a few devices. If you need to manage this setting across multiple devices, deploying an Intune device configuration policy is the best approach. Let’s go through the steps:
- Sign in to Intune admin center > Devices > Windows > Configuration > Create > New Policy.
- Platform: Windows 10 and later
- Profile type: Settings catalog
- Click Create.
- On the Basics tab, provide a Name and Description of the policy and click Next.
- On Configuration settings tab, click on + Add settings and use the Settings picker to search using taskbar keyword and select Search category. Select the policy, Configure Search on Taskbar mode.
- Use the drop-down next to Configure Search on Taskbar mode and select Hide.
- Scope tags: Click Next
- Assignments: Assign this policy to an entra security group containing devices. It’s a best practice to test the policy on a few devices first. If it’s working fine, then extend it to other devices.
- Review + create: Review the policy settings and click on Create.
Monitoring Hide Search Box Intune Policy
- Sign in to the Intune admin center > Devices > Configuration.
- Select the Device Configuration profile you want to work with, and at the top of the page, you’ll see a quick view of the Success, Failure, Conflict, Not Applicable, and In Progress status.
- Click on View report to access more detailed information.
Sync Intune Policies
The device check-in process might not begin immediately. If you’re testing this policy on a test device, you can manually kickstart Intune sync from the device itself or remotely through the Intune admin center.
Alternatively, you can use PowerShell to force the Intune sync on Windows devices. Restarting the device is another way to trigger the Intune device check-in process.
End User Experience
After the deployment is completed successfully, you will observe that the Search box has disappeared from the taskbar. If you still find the search box even after applying the intune policy, restart your computer once.
Troubleshooting
If you encounter any issues with this Intune deployment, you can remotely collect diagnostic logs from the target device and analyze them to identify the root cause. To collect these logs, follow the Step-by-Step Guide: Collect Intune logs from Windows devices.
These diagnostic logs contain all the necessary information for troubleshooting. For example, they include IntuneManagementExtension.log, AppWorkload.log, Event Viewer logs and more, which can help in fixing the issues.
Hide Search box from Start Menu
If you want to further restrict users from using Search box and hide it from Start menu as well, you can use the following OMA-URI policy setting:
- Sign in to the Intune admin center > Devices > Configuration > Create > New Policy.
- Select Platform as Windows 10 and later.
- Profile type as Templates.
- Template Name: Custom.
- Basics Tab: Provide a Name and Description of the policy.
- Configuration settings: Click on the Add button to add OMA-URI settings and provide the following:
- Name: Disable Search box in Start Menu
- OMA-URI: ./Device/Vendor/MSFT/Policy/Config/Search/DisableSearch
- Data type: Integer
- Value: 1
For more Information about disabling or hiding Search box from Start menu, refer to the link: Disable Search box.
Disable Search box on Taskbar using Registry
You can also use Windows registry editor to disable search box on taskbar of Windows 11 devices. Let’s check the steps:
- Open the Registry editor.
- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search and create/update the registry entry SearchboxTaskbarMode and set its value to 0 to disable the Search box.
| Value | Behavior |
|---|---|
| 0 | Hide the search box entirely |
| 1 | Show only the search icon (magnifying glass) |
| 2 | Show the full search box with text input field |
| 3 | Show the full search box but optimized for tablets (Windows 11) |
- Below screenshot shows the behavior of Search box when setting the values of SearchboxTaskbarMode is set to 1, 2 and 3 respectively. When you set it to 0, the search box will not appear on the taskbar.
