The redesign is also about speed. "This new Windows Search experience is built for speed," says Anshul Rawat, corporate vice president of the Windows product team at Microsoft, noting that it is built on WinUI 3, Microsoft's modern interface framework, as part of a broader push to modernise core Windows experiences. Early testing has shown what Microsoft calls substantial improvements in performance and memory usage.

Phone control is next: Microsoft is teasing the ability to issue commands via Phone Link from the Search bar, with sending text messages the only capability disclosed so far.

The update brings a leaner look too. The familiar two-column Search layout gives way to a central, stacked row of results, a change Microsoft says follows behavioural research showing that nearly all clicks in the current design come from the results list on the left rather than the large preview pane on the right. Inline previews and richer file details will arrive properly in the new design later this year.

Insiders can test the experience now through an Experimental release channel via build 26340.9616 (26H2) or 26340.9616 (26H1). It is English-only for the time being, and web queries in Search still work, with the ability to turn the feature off entirely available following the Windows 11 26H2 update.