Windows 11 File Explorer no longer remembers search history; how to reenable?

The correct path to History is Settings / Privacy & Security / Search Permissions / History .

There is a listing for "Search history on this device" with an On/Off switch.

This did not restore the function of viewing previous searches.

Those settings have nothing to do with the drop down history (aka auto-suggest list) in Explorer search. That's a feature that was removed when Microsoft changed the search to results-as-you-type. There's no known way to restore the old search on Windows 11.

The instructions are still incorrect. There is not a selection for Permissions and History.

The correct path to History is Settings / Privacy & Security / Search Permissions / History .

There is a listing for "Search history on this device" with an On/Off switch.

This did not restore the function of viewing previous searches.

Hi Patricia,

What I'd recommend doing is switching your Explorer to the Windows 10 version. Since the old version is still built into Windows 11, you can do that easily, even as a Standard user. The easiest method is to use a free tool I made called SwitchExplorer. Just download and run. Nothing to install.

I'd also recommend either uninstalling OneDrive or carefully reviewing how it's being used and how it may be affecting your work flow. For example, by default OneDrive syncs your Pictures folder. If you have those 350,000 photos within Pictures, they will be subject to syncing to the cloud which could seriously affect performance. OneDrive can be a very useful tool, but I don't like how it's foisted on users because when syncing goes wrong (or the user misunderstands what OneDrive is doing) more data can be lost than saved.

Also, review and adjust which folders are indexed using the Indexing options control panel. That's key to getting good search performance.

Keep you search settings like this (i.e. everything unchecked):

Note that second section heading is "When searching non-indexed locations". You don't want to search contents in non-indexed folders. That takes too long. Just make sure everywhere you want to search is indexed.

Hopefully that's enough to get things working better for you.

Microsoft hired idiots. Things worked find then they screwed with Explorer (file mgmt) and Win 11 total sucks. It takes me an extra hour daily to do the same win 10 tasks. Thinking about going to Linux. Also I can't search an internal drive on my desktop with Win 11 without total hell. I have to go 2 rooms away to search for my photos because Win 11 doesn't allow searching internal drives on the host desktop. I have 350,000 photos and if I don't know the EXACT FOLDER the photo is in, I can't find it. Now with the new horrid explorer, it's even hard and it erases the search.

Some of the solutions to fix it above are ludicrous. If the problems happened when the added home and made finding faves in the quick access menu, total living hell, then it can't be malware. If it is not broken, why fix (change) it?

FIRE the designer. My blood pressure is skyrocket do to these incompetent employees.

This was definitely how it worked until around this time last year.

Somebody has already stated which update that broke it, but by the time I found this thread, the option to remove the offending update had been removed.

My workflow involves me switching between thousands of directories, usually centring on a dozen or so over a period of a few weeks until a project has finished. Having to search the entire system over and over and over is extremely time-consuming!

Prior to this, all recent directories and files appeared the moment I clicked in the search box.

I just spent several hours testing old Windows 11 builds, starting with 22H2 build 382 from September 2022 and then builds 900, 963, 1105, 1265, and finally 1413 (KB5023706) from March 2023.

All of the builds, prior to 1413, provided a history drop-down list in the Explorer search box. All of those builds also required pressing Enter in the Explorer search box. None of them displayed results as you type in the Search box.

Starting with build 1413, the Search box behavior changed to show results as you type. Also, at this point, the history drop-down list no longer existed.

Based on my test observations, there was never a point where the Search box in Windows 11 displayed results as you type AND provided a history drop-down list.

As I mentioned earlier, it would have been relatively easy for Microsoft to provide a check box to let you select the old or new behavior. That would have been the appropriate, customer-oriented thing to do.

There may have been some other reason behind the change, such as the Bing decoupling required by the EU, and maybe they just reverted to the old search code rather than programming something new. It's hard to get any good information about why/how Microsoft changes/breaks things in Explorer because there's absolutely no transparency when it comes to those UI/UX changes. Microsoft has the terrible habit of bundling Explorer changes with "Security updates" with zero information about the UI/UX changes in the release notes. If they actually documented these changes I wouldn't have had to do all that trial and error testing.