- Microsoft has snuck a new feature into the Bing Wallpaper app
- This will perform a Bing search when you click on the Windows 11 desktop
- This is likely to confuse people – or annoy them – as this is unexpected and strange behavior and the functionality is turned on by default
Those using the Bing Wallpaper app – which isn’t installed in Windows 11 by default, I should clarify – are treated to a new piece of annoying behavior.
Windows Latest reports that Bing Wallpaper will now launch a Bing search in your web browser if you click anywhere on the Windows 11 desktop, in one of the more bizarre moves Microsoft has made to promote its search engine.
The search is related to the topic of the desktop background that the Bing app displays if you want to learn more about it. But of course it’s a problem when you just click on the desktop, which you might do by accident, your browser starts up with the Bing search engine.
I imagine there will be a lot of confused Windows 11 users out there who may have missed a click on a folder they wanted to open and have been seriously surprised to be confronted with an explanation of what a two-toed sloth is (example image featured by Windows Latest).
What’s going on here? Well, it turns out there’s a new ‘feature’ in the Bing Wallpaper app that you’ll find in the settings – a ‘Desktop click opens Bing’ slider that 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.
Analytics: Take advantage of random clicks
There are some small mercies here that are worth noting. First, as mentioned at the beginning, you need to install the Bing Wallpaper app to have it on your PC; it is not something that is placed in Windows 11 by default.
Second, by some minor miracle, the Bing search opens in your default browser, not Edge. So if you use Chrome, at least you get Bing in Google’s browser, and not a double dose of Microsoft promotion with both Edge and Bing.
The other small relief here is that if you click on the desktop again shortly after invoking the Bing search once already, you won’t have this search presented to you again. Windows Recently experimented a bit and it seems that there is some kind of timer with this functionality that means it won’t repeat for a short period of time (or it might only happen once a day). Even Microsoft isn’t stupid enough to have a Bing search open over and over every time you click on an empty field on the desktop.
These are really small mercies though, and the fact that this feature is turned on by default is frankly ridiculous. By all means, put the option in, but leave it off so it’s only used by those who actually want to be able to click on the wallpaper to find out more about it (coincidentally, there are some people who actually like the idea).
As it is, this is clearly just another way to unfairly drum up some Bing traffic, and it makes you wonder how much of Microsoft’s search traffic comes from this kind of Windows debugging. This is exactly the kind of tactic that keeps me from using some of Microsoft’s products – and I’m sure I’m not alone.
I don’t use Bing Wallpaper anyway, but by all accounts it was a pretty neat and streamlined app for bringing some color to your Windows 11 backgrounds on a daily basis when it first appeared. Unfortunately, it seems to have been slowly twisted into a more annoying and underhand piece of software, so maybe it’s time to backtrack, Microsoft?
Or more generally in every corner of Windows 11, can we put the user experience above the ‘Microsoft experience’ more often, please?
As an alternative in Windows 11, you can always turn on Windows Spotlight (i Settings > Personalization > Background, in the ‘Customize your background’ dropdown menu) to get your fill of rotating wallpaper instead of using said Bing app.
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