Windows 10’s Start menu can search your files, but it seems like Microsoft is more interested in pushing Bing and other online search features these days. While Windows still has some powerful search features, they’re a bit harder to find—and you might want to consider a third-party tool instead.
The Start Menu (and Cortana)
The Start menu search functionality on Windows 10 is handled by Cortana, and it searches Bing and other online sources in addition to the files on your local PC.
In the initial version of Windows 10, you could click a “My Stuff” button while searching to search only your PC. This feature was removed in the Anniversary Update. There’s no way to only search your local PC’s files while searching your PC—not unless you disable Cortana via the registry.
However, you can still use the Start menu for some basic file searches. Search for a file stored in an indexed location and it should appear somewhere in the list.
This won’t always work because the Start menu only searches indexed locations, and there’s no way to search other areas of your system from here without adding them to the index.
By default, the Start menu searches everything it can—indexed files, Bing, OneDrive, the Windows Store, and other online locations. You can narrow this down by clicking the “Filters” button and selecting “Documents”, “Folders”, “Photos”, or “Videos”.
The problem is that there’s no way to search just all your local files. These categories are all narrow and include online locations, like your OneDrive.
To improve the results, click the “Filters” option in the menu and then click the “Select locations” button at the bottom of the menu. You’ll be able to choose your indexed search locations. Windows automatically scans and monitors these folders, building the search index it uses when you search via the Start menu. By default, it will index data in your user account’s folders and not much else.
File Explorer
If you frequently…
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