We all know that Google Chrome collects a large amount of personal data about us while we browse the Internet, data that is used for commercial purposes. But what about the rest of browsers? Firefox collects data (although less) for browser improvement purposes. And Edge , Microsoft‘s new browser, although it is also below Chrome, collects personal information that it processes and uses to improve our experience. This data is required for some features, such as taskbar tips, to work properly. However, they also pose a danger to our privacy. What is most important to us?
Edge has a suggestion system that allows users to view a list of search and website recommendations by typing in the address bar. To do this, it uses an interest system based on what we have previously done (thanks to Bing), as well as consulting our history and saved bookmarks. This function helps us navigate faster without having to memorize web strings. But it also means a significant reduction in our privacy.
If we are one of those who are concerned about our privacy, surely we usually take care of the amount of data that the browser saves about us, and avoid sharing with companies, such as Microsoft, as much information as possible. Therefore, if you do not use the suggestion system in the Edge address bar, and we are one of those who take care of our privacy, with these tricks we can disable this function.
Disable Edge address bar suggestions
The fastest and easiest way to disable this feature is to do it from Edge’s own settings. In the first versions of the browser, this function had to be blocked from the operating system, but right now we can do it with a couple of clicks from the browser itself.
To do this, the first thing we will do is open the Edge configuration menu, and scroll to the ” Privacy, search and services > Address bar and search ” section. We can also get to it by typing “edge: // settings / search” in the address bar.
Here we will find an option called ” Show me search and site suggestions using the characters you type “. This option is the one that is responsible for sending to Bing what we are writing in the address bar to obtain information related to our interests.
If we deactivate it, we will stop using Bing, and only information will be displayed in this bar based on our history and local bookmarks, nothing more. If we don’t want this to appear in the browser either, we can remove it by unchecking the box ” Show me suggestions for the history, favorites and other data of this device with my written characters “.
If we want to use these functions in our browser again, we simply have to re-activate its box, nothing more.
Other ways to turn off Edge suggestions
Microsoft offers us other ways to do the same, although more designed for advanced users.
From group policies
One of the ways to disable this function is to do it from the Windows 10 group policies. Of course, we must make sure that we are using the “Pro” edition of the operating system, otherwise we will not be able to access this editor.
We write “gpedit.msc” in the Windows 10 search bar, and we move to the next section:
Configuración de equipo > Plantillas administrativas > Componentes de Windows > Microsoft Edge
Here we must locate a directive called “Allow suggestions in the drop-down list of the address bar”. We double click on it and we can see the panel that will allow us to enable or disable this function. If we check “Disabled” Edge will not show us the suggestions. On the contrary, if we want it to show them, we can mark it as “Enabled”.
From the record
We will also be able to make a change in the Windows registry that will allow us to do the same. For this we will write “regedit” in the address bar, and we will move to the next section:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER / Software / Políticas / Microsoft / MicrosoftEdge / ServiceUI
Here, we will create a new 32-bit DWORD value, and name it “ShowOneBox”.
If we assign this value “0”, then the search bar suggestions will be disabled. On the contrary, if we assign it “1”, then they will be activated.
