- Microsoft has sneaked a brand new function into the Bing Wallpaper app
- This enacts a Bing search while you click on on the Home windows 11 desktop
- It will doubtless confuse folks – or annoy them – seeing as that is sudden and odd conduct, and the performance is on by default
Those that use the Bing Wallpaper app – which is not put in in Windows 11 by default, I ought to make clear – are being handled to a recent piece of nuisance conduct.
Windows Latest reports that Bing Wallpaper now fires up a Bing search in your net browser for those who click on anyplace on the Home windows 11 desktop, in one of many more odd strikes Microsoft has made to advertise its search engine.
The search pertains to the subject of the desktop background that the Bing app is displaying, in case you want to learn more about it. But obviously it’s a problem when just clicking on the desktop, which you might do by accident, fires up your browser with the Bing search engine.
I imagine there will be a lot of confused Windows 11 users out there who’ve maybe missed a click on a folder they wanted to open and been seriously surprised to be confronted by an explanation of what a two-toed sloth is (the example pic highlighted by Windows Latest).
What’s happening here? Well, it turns out there’s a new ‘feature’ in the Bing Wallpaper app which you’ll find in the settings – a slider for ‘Desktop click opens Bing’ which does exactly what it says. And here’s the kicker: it’s on by default, when an ability like this should clearly be off unless you choose to enable it.
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There are some small mercies here that are worth noting. First, as mentioned at the outset, you must install the Bing Wallpaper app to have it on your PC; it’s not something placed in Windows 11 by default.
Second, by some minor miracle, the Bing search will open in your default browser, not Edge. So, if you use Chrome, not less than you will get Bing in Google‘s browser, and never a double serving to of Microsoft promotion with both Edge and Bing.
The opposite small aid right here is that for those who click on on the desktop once more, quickly after having summoned the Bing search as soon as already, you will not get this search offered to you once more. Home windows Newest experimented a bit, and it appears there’s some form of timer with this performance which means it will not be repeated in a brief area of time (or it probably solely occurs as soon as a day). Even Microsoft is not silly sufficient to have a Bing search open time and again each time you click on a clean area on the desktop.
These are diminutive mercies certainly, although, and the truth that this function is on by default is ridiculous sufficient, frankly. By all means, put the power in, however go away it turned off, in order that it is solely utilized by those that really need to have the ability to click on on the wallpaper to search out out extra about it (on the off-chance there are some people who really like the thought).
As it’s, that is clearly simply one other strategy to drum up some Bing site visitors in an unfair method, and it makes you marvel how a lot of Microsoft’s search site visitors comes from this type of misdirection in Home windows. That is precisely the form of tactic that places me off utilizing a few of Microsoft’s products – and I am certain I am not alone.
I do not use Bing Wallpaper anyway, however by all accounts it was fairly a neat and streamlined app for bringing some coloration to your Home windows 11 backgrounds every day when it first emerged. Sadly, it appears to have slowly been twisted into a more annoying and underhand piece of software, so possibly it is time to stroll that again, Microsoft?
Or, extra broadly in all corners of Home windows 11, can we put the consumer expertise over the ‘Microsoft expertise’ extra usually, please?
In its place in Home windows 11, you could possibly at all times change on Home windows Highlight (in Settings > Personalization > Background, within the ‘Personalize your background’ dropdown menu) to get your fill of rotating wallpaper quite than utilizing mentioned Bing app.
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