How to change the default search engine in Microsoft Edge (Chromium)

It should not come as a surprise that the default search engine of Microsoft Edge -- regardless of whether it is the classic version or new Chromium version -- is Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Some people prefer Bing over Google and other search engines and that is perfectly fine; others may prefer to use a different search engine for their searches.

I never found Bing to be very good when it came to non-English queries as it seemed heavily focused on English regions and search results. If you are in the same boat, you may want to change the search engine to use it when you run searches from the address bar.

I suppose it is also possible to visit the search engine manually instead each time and run searches from the search engine's website, but that is not the most comfortable of options.

Tip: the final version of Microsoft Edge has been released.

Change search engine in Microsoft Edge Chromium

The quickest way to change the search engine in the new Microsoft Edge browser is the following one:

1. Load edge://settings/search in the browser's address bar; this should load the search settings.
2. Click on the menu next to "search engine used in the address bar" to switch the search engine from Bing to another search engine. The new search engine is used from that moment on whenever you run searches.

Edge lists five different search engines there only, and one of the is YouTube. You can switch to Google, DuckDuckGo or Yahoo but that is about it; not the greatest of selections but it may be sufficient if your preferred search engine is on that list.

If it is not, my favorite Startpage is not, you have two options:

Option 1: Visit the search engine and run a search on it

1. Open the Search Engine in Microsoft Edge.
2. Run a search for TEST or something generic.
3. Open the Search Engines page in the browser: edge://settings/searchEngines
4. Select the three dots next to the search engine that you want to make the default in Microsoft Edge and pick "make default" from the menu.

That is all there is to it.

Some search engines may not be added automatically. If that is the case, you may use the second option to add them.

Option 2: Add the search engine manually

1. Select Manage search engines on the same page.
2. Click on the Add button to add a new search engine to the list. You are asked to fill out the following three fields:
   1. Search Engine -- Pick a name to identify the search engine.
   2. Keyword -- Optional, may be used to run searches on that search engine if it is not the default.
   3. URL -- The search URL that uses the variable %s in place of the query.
3. Click on Add to add the search engine.

To get the URL, run a search for TEST or another term that is easily identifiable in the URL. Copy the full results URL into the URL field in Microsoft Edge and replace the search term with %s.

On Startpage, you get a search results URL such as https://www.startpage.com/do/search?lui=english&language=english&cat=web&query=TEST&nj=&anticache=502855 when you run such a search. Simply replace TEST with %s and you are done. You may also remove the parameters to streamline the URL so that you may end up with https://www.startpage.com/do/search?query=%s.

Now You: Which is your preferred search engine and why?

Advertisement