Microsoft introduced a new Windows Search feature recently that aims to improve the indexing of content on Windows devices. For the unaware, search indexing has several goals, including improving the speed of searches on Windows and using more information to return results. Indexing records information about files in folders that do get indexed.
Microsoft explains:
Indexing is the process of looking at files, email messages, and other content on your PC and cataloging their information, such as the words and metadata in them. When you search your PC after indexing, it looks at an index of terms to find results faster.
Up until now, indexing ran on a base set of folders, such as the Documents and Music folders, and any folder the user or organization added to an allow-list.
This changes with recent Windows updates, starting with KB5120998 for the first users. The new feature “Automatically find additional relevant locations” is available on some devices already. It appears to be turned on by default and will add folders to the indexing runs on Windows devices.
The idea is to add folders that are used often by the user, so that Windows Search can return information from these folders more reliably.
While that may be a good idea on devices where users do not touch the indexing configuration at all, Windows users who want to stay in control may want to turn the feature off to decide which folders do get indexed on the system.
Here is how you check for the existence of the feature and how you turn it off, if it exists:
- Open the Settings app via the Windows button or by pressing Windows-I.
- Go to Privacy & security > Search
- Search for “Automatically find additional relevant locations”.
- Switch the feature to off, if turned on and existing.
Note that this won’t disable indexing on the Windows system, but that it will prevent Windows from adding new locations to the indexing process without user say in the matter.