Windows 10 has a large number of functions that allow us to make all kinds of queries on the Internet quickly and easily. However, the operating system sweeps up its own home, meaning that it sends all of these queries to Bing, Microsoft‘s search engine. And it does not allow us to modify this engine to perform them, for example, through Google or any other search engine. Luckily, there are always users willing to offer options that Microsoft does not offer by default. And this is how Search Deflector was born.
Search Deflector is a very small, free and open source program that has only one objective: to allow us to change the default search engine of Windows 10 (Bing) for another one that we choose. In this way, when we perform searches through Cortana, or from the Windows 10 search engine itself, these will be performed through the engine we have chosen, keeping Bing away from our operating system.
In addition to allowing us to change the default engine, it will also allow us to turn our backs on its search engine, Edge. This program will also allow us to change the search engine used by default to open the links of the searches carried out by the browser that we want.
How does it work
The first thing to note is that Windows Defender detects this program as a threat . This is because, as it makes changes to the internal parameters of the operating system, the antivirus heuristic detects it as a potentially unwanted program. However, we can be sure that we are dealing with secure and reliable software. If we download the version from the Microsoft Store we will save these problems with the antivirus.
The operation of this software is really simple. When we run it, we can see a window like the following.
As we can see, in the program window we will find a section from which we will be able to change the default browser used to open Cortana’s links and the search engine, and another to be able to choose the search engine we want.
In the browser section we can find all the browsers we have installed on the system, and in the search engine section we can find a good list of search engines . Even some focused on privacy, like DuckDuckGo.
We will even have the possibility to configure our own engine, or choose a custom web browser based on its own executable.
When we have configured these parameters, simply click on “Apply” and you’re done. The program will take care of making the corresponding changes in our Windows 10 and that’s it. When opening a search link, Windows 10 may show us a window asking us which browser we want to use to open it. We must select in this case an entry called “Search Deflector” so that the search passes through this program to open with the browser and the search engine that we have configured.
Revert the changes
In case we regret it and do not want to continue opening the links through this program (that is, if we want to use Edge and Bing again), we can uninstall this program from Windows so that it stops working.
When we do, Windows 10 will work again as it always has.
Download Search Deflector
This program, as we have explained, is completely free and open source. If we are interested in using it, we can download it very easily from its repository on GitHub . From here we will always download the latest version and, in addition, we will not have to pay anything.
In addition to this version, its developer has decided to upload the app to the Microsoft Store so that it can be downloaded from there and used as a universal app. This version is identical to the one we can download from GitHub, but it costs 1.99 euros. It is more than anything a “donation” version to continue the development of the program.
The free version also includes a custom code that will allow us to keep the program always up-to-date and up-to-date without having to worry.
Alternatives
This program is neither unique nor original. Even its developer explains that it was born from the idea of two similar programs, but they did not finish working properly.
The first of them is EdgeDeflector . What this program does is replace the URLs generated by Cortana (which start with microsoft-edge to force the use of this browser) by other generic URLs that can be opened with the default browser of the system. However, this program was incomplete, buggy, offered no settings, and relied on an extension, called Chrometana, to convert Bing searches to Google searches.
And secondly we have SearchWithMyBrowser . This program is very similar to the previous one, so much so that it even has its own problems. An alternative in case Search Deflector does not work on our computer, or we cannot download it.
