You've probably heard it a few times before, but Windows Search isn't good. Whether you're trying to find apps or files, the search bar on your taskbar and Start menu almost always falls short. It functions alright for some things, but I'd always recommend replacing it.

And you might think we're just in a bad moment and things will come back around, but honestly, it doesn't feel that way. Windows Search has felt broken since the days of Windows 10, and by the looks of it, it's not really getting better. Microsoft seems more keen on adding unnecessary fluff around it than improving the search engine itself, and it's one of the many sore spots of Windows 11.

Finding what you want is not easy

Jumpy and unreliable

One thing that I've noticed fairly consistently with Windows Search is its tendency to not immediately reflect results for what I'm typing as I write, which has caused me to open the wrong app many times. Or, in some cases, search the web for an incomplete term because Windows Search didn't properly autocomplete it. It can take a second for the results list to properly update, and when you're typing quickly, it becomes a problem that frustrates me to no end.

If you're just looking for files or folders, it's also not great. If the file you're looking for is buried in a long directory with many subfolders leading to it, it might not show up in the results. Plus, not every location on your PC is indexed by default, so some files won't appear at all unless you change that setting. But even then, Microsoft warns you that indexing can take a long time and use a lot of resources, and it likely increases the time it takes to get good results when searching, too.

Interestingly, the problem with searching for apps seems to get resolved if I disable file search altogether, but I shouldn't have to do that to get a solid experience that actually works.

Microsoft keeps focusing on the wrong things

Copilot and web content have taken over

With Windows Search failing to get the basics right, you would think it's a good idea to focus on that, but instead, Microsoft seems more focused on attempting to spruce up search with features that aren't nearly as useful.

When you open Windows Search on the taskbar, the UI is already aggressively trying to get you to engage with things that don't matter. There's a Copilot button, a banner for a random fact or interesting tidbit, and a few recommendations for files you may want to open. The search results themselves also focus on web content, though I think that's fine, as long as the web results don't take priority over local ones. It would also make a lot more sense if you could at least change the search engine and browser that open your web searches, but outside of the European Economic Area, which has legally enforced it, that's not possible.

One thing Microsoft added recently that can be useful is finding files by searching for their contents, particularly in images. Basically, you can describe the content of a photo, and Windows uses AI to identify that content and retrieve the right file, and that is admittedly pretty cool. However, it doesn't make up for the fact that searching for file names is still not as reliable and fast as it should be, especially when this AI-powered search is only available on Copilot+ PCs. The vast majority of people is still using PCs that are a few years old and don't support Copilot+, so this benefits a small portion of people.

Also, this is somewhat unrelated, but there's also a video of someone using the search bar in the Windows Settings app to search for the exact term suggested by the operating system, only for it to show no results. Sometimes it feels as though the company isn't even trying to make its search features work properly.

Third-party apps have had to step up

They're so much better at searching

All this complaining probably wouldn't exist if I didn't know that it's possible to do so much better with your search tools. For one thing, macOS already offers a more reliable search tool with Spotlight, but even on Windows, developers have been outshining Microsoft for years at this point, offering search tools that are so much better.

Just look at Everything. When it comes to file searches, Everything is absolutely incredible. It's a minuscule app and once you install it, it indexes your entire computer in seconds (depending on how many files you have, of course). And when you start searching for files or folders, results are shown instantly from across your entire computer, unless you actively choose to ignore certain folders. You can search for full paths, use wildcards, and more. It may take a minute to learn all the options, but it works incredibly fast.

And for apps, launchers like Flow Launcher have been offering instant results for a good while, too. In fact, Flow Launcher does laps around Windows Search in multiple ways. The search bar itself is summoned in a blink using the appropriate keyboard shortcut, and once you start typing, results for apps also show up instantly, and they're not jumpy. When you press Enter to open an app, you know it's going to open what you want.

In fact, you can go further and integrate Everything into Flow Launcher, so it gives you the best of both worlds. And that's not even getting into everything else you can do with plugins for Flow Launcher. It just makes it even more apparent that Microsoft should be doing better, but just doesn't.

Even Microsoft has a better solution with PowerToys and the Command Palette utility (or PowerToys Run), which can also integrate with Everything. By collaborating with the community, this app offers a much better search experience, but you probably won't see it built into Windows anytime soon.

It's a waste of time

I didn't realize how much of a problem Windows Search really was until recently, but after having tried apps like Flow Launcher, it's baffling to me that this is something most Windows users still have to deal with. I've turned to using Raycast or Flow Launcher on my PCs, and I highly recommend other users do the same. You'll find apps and files much faster and be noticeably more productive just by wasting less time.