At present, in Windows 11, online search results from the search panel are forcibly opened in Microsoft Edge, regardless of whether users have set Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox as their default browser.
This situation, however, may soon change. According to Windows Latest, several experimental flags have been discovered in the Microsoft Edge Canary build, some of which suggest that Microsoft may eventually lift this browser lock-in.
The experimental flags include:
- msEdgeSearchboxHandlerSendsFaviconData
- msExplicitLaunchNonBingDSE
- msExplicitLaunchNonBingDSEAndNonEdgeDB
- msExplicitLaunchNonEdgeDB
- msSettingsMatchWordStart
- msWSBLaunchNonBingDSE
- msWSBLaunchNonBingDSEAndNonEdgeDB
- msWSBLaunchNonEdgeDB
Judging by their names, these flags may indicate that Microsoft is considering allowing users to open search results with their system default browser and chosen default search engine, rather than being forced into using Microsoft Edge and Bing.
If implemented, the effect would be similar to this: when a user sets Chrome as their default browser and Google Search as the default engine, queries entered in the Windows search panel would open directly in Chrome using Google Search, rather than being routed through Edge and Bing.
For now, it remains unclear what Microsoft’s ultimate intention is with these experimental options. They may represent nothing more than early-stage testing. Still, it is possible that in the future Microsoft could integrate them into Edge’s settings, allowing users to manually disable the bundling and instead designate Chrome and Google Search as the default search panel options.
