You may soon be able to Google search in Chrome straight from Windows 11's search box

Microsoft has long disregarded the default browser when it comes to the Window search bar, at least outside the European Economic Area (EEA). That could change in the near future as evidence of Microsoft reworking the behaviour of the search bar has been found. Unfortunately, it is unclear when this functionality will make it to a final release.

The flags were first spotted by Leopeva64 and shared on X a couple weeks ago (September 18). These were present in an Edge Canary build and suggest that the taskbar Windows Search box will respect your default browser and search engine. The “msExplicitLaunchNonBingDSE,” “msExplicitLaunchNonBingDSEAndNonEdgeDB,” and “msWSBLaunchNonBingDSE,” flags, among others, suggest that users could be given a choice to switch their browser and search engine for the Windows Search.

As highlighted by Leopeva64, “DSE” is likely referring to Default Search Engine and “WSB” is referring to Windows Search Box. Windows Latest reported on the full list of related flags and they are as follows:

• msExplicitLaunchNonBingDSE
• msExplicitLaunchNonBingDSEAndNonEdgeDB
• msExplicitLaunchNonEdgeDB
• msWSBLaunchNonBingDSE
• msWSBLaunchNonBingDSEAndNonEdgeDB
• msWSBLaunchNonEdgeDB

Entering a search query and then being redirected to the default browser with that query would be a great addition to Windows 11, if Microsoft does release a final build. As it stands now, regardless of your default browser, a Windows Search query always opens a Bing result in Edge. That being said, these flags were spotted in Edge Canary, which is a testing and experimenting build of the browser. Therefore, it is also possible that these features never make it to the masses.