Windows Start Search has changed. Press the Start button, and when you type, the results appear categorized into Apps, Documents, Email, Web, Folders, Music, People, Photos, Settings, Videos, and more. It is the primary reason why Enhanced mode came into the picture. Unless everything is indexed, this would not have been useful.

Windows 11/10 calls the old search technique as a classic search in this version. The Classic search mode is restricted to Libraries and Desktop. The end users can choose to customize search locations by manually adding them to the indexer. In simple words, it would index files and folders that users wanted to get indexed. If the search term were not in the index, it would initiate the regular search which takes a longer time.

Enhanced Search indexes everything. It is its default nature, precisely the opposite of the Classic search. Users can exclude folders where the Search will not look, and index anything which could be personal to the user. It also means that it can impact life on the battery for laptops. The initial crawl of your data will only take place when connected to power.  During that period, both the CPU usage and battery will take a bit of a hit.

Enable Enhanced Search Mode in Windows 11

To enable Enhanced search mode in Windows 11, follow these steps:

Next, choose folders which Windows Indexer should exclude from the Enhanced Seach mode.

Enable Enhanced Search Mode in Windows 10

Here is how you can enable Enhanced Mode in Windows 10 Search :

That’s it! The next time you search, Windows is looking at all the places, and since they are in the index, the results will be faster. Apart from these, there are two more settings which you should look at. 1] Advanced Search Indexer Settings

Windows 11

Windows 10

Advanced Search Indexing Options allow you to fine-tune how or where Windows will search or which files types Windows will search. It will open the same setting available under Classic search.

2] Run the Indexing Troubleshooter When you click on it, Windows will start the troubleshooter to fix any Search & indexing issue. Overall, Enhanced Search mode makes more sense, especially with the availability of option to exclude folders. I can make sure my privacy is in place, and I can still find what is on my computer. Read: How to disable Bing Search results in Start Menu of Windows 11/10.

How do I make Windows 11/10 search better?

To make Windows 11/10 search better, you can enable the Enhanced search indexing mode. For that, you need to open Windows Settings, go to Privacy & security > Searching Windows. Here you can find a section called Find my files. From here, you need to switch to the Enhanced mode.

How do I do an advanced search in Windows 11/10?

There are multiple things you can do to do an advanced search in Windows 11/10. For example, you can select a specific file type – document, image, web, etc. Apart from that, you can search for a particular file extension or type as well. You need to enter .pdf, .docx, etc., along with the file name while searching for a file.