Microsoft is quietly tuning File Explorer’s search plumbing in Windows 11 to do less redundant work — an Insider-preview change that removes
duplicate file indexing operations inside the Windows Search Indexer, promising faster searches and lower system resource use during file operations on machines that receive the update.
Background / Overview
File Explorer remains the single most‑used interface in Windows for moving, previewing, and locating files, and small inefficiencies there compound into daily friction for millions of users. Over the past year Microsoft has been addressing two related pain points: the perceived slowness of Explorer’s
first launch (the “cold start”), and search performance and resource churn caused by indexing and query work. Recent Insider builds show Microsoft tackling both areas — a background preloading experiment to improve cold starts, and search‑side fixes that remove duplicate indexing work to reduce CPU, disk I/O and memory pressure while searches run. The specific indexing improvement appears in recent Insider Preview releases (notably builds in the 26220 series). Microsoft’s blog notes: “Made some improvements to File Explorer search performance by eliminating duplicate file indexing operations, which should result in faster searches and reduced system resource usage during file operations.” That language is the explicit engineering note we can verify in Microsoft’s Insider post for Build 26220.7523. At the same time, Microsoft is reorganizing the File Explorer context menu to declutter the top level — grouping less‑used verbs (Compress to ZIP, Copy as path, Rotate, Set as desktop background) into a submenu such as
Manage file or
Other actions. That UI clean‑up is rolling through Insider rings alongside the indexing and preload experiments.
What Microsoft changed — the short technical summary
- The File Explorer search UI continues to rely on the Windows Search Indexer (the system index), not a separate engine. File Explorer invokes index queries rather than running full disk scans for every request. Microsoft’s improvement is on the indexer side — reducing or eliminating duplicate file indexing operations that could otherwise cause redundant scanning and processing.
- Eliminating duplicate indexing operations should reduce:
- Background disk I/O from redundant file reads,
- CPU cycles spent by the indexing service and other processes that react to indexing activity,
- The number of concurrent background indexing tasks that spike memory usage during heavy file operations.
- These changes are delivered as part of Insider Preview builds in the 26220 family (Dev/Beta channels) and are being rolled out gradually with toggles/experiments for telemetry-driven validation. Microsoft’s release notes for Build 26220.7523 name the change explicitly.
Why duplicate indexing happens (a technical breakdown)
Understanding the practical benefit requires a brief look at how Windows indexing works and where duplication can arise.
How indexing is supposed to work
- The Search Indexer maintains a catalog of files, their properties and (optionally) file content so queries return results from the index rather than scanning the disk. Indexing runs in the background and updates the index when files change.
Common causes of duplicate indexing operations
- Multiple enumerations of the same path: different subsystems or threads can ask the indexer to process the same folder in quick succession under race conditions.
- Reparse points, junctions and symbolic links: the same physical file can be reachable by different logical paths; naive indexing logic can process the same target more than once unless canonicalization is applied.
- Multiple indexers / filters interacting: third‑party IFilter implementations, shell extensions or backup/antivirus agents may trigger overlapping index updates.
- Connected external volumes and cloud placeholders: transient mounts, OneDrive placeholders, or flaky network storage can cause the indexer to re-enqueue items repeatedly.
- Edge cases in drive/partition handling: system vs. secondary drive differences can produce duplicated scan work if the indexer’s location handling isn’t consistent.
By removing or deduplicating these redundant operations at the indexer level, Microsoft reduces the work the system performs during indexing and search queries.
Verified details and cross‑references
- Microsoft’s Insider release notes for Build 26220.7523 include the exact phrase about eliminating duplicate indexing operations. That is the primary, verifiable engineering statement tied to this change.
- Independent coverage and hands‑on reports confirm the presence of search and context‑menu changes in recent Insider builds; outlets such as Windows Latest and Windows Central have reported the same behavioral changes and experimental availability in the 26220 preview stream.
- Microsoft documentation makes clear that File Explorer uses the Windows Search index and that indexing settings (Classic vs. Enhanced, indexed locations) determine where and how indexing runs. Any change to the indexer therefore affects Explorer’s search behavior directly. This relationship is explicit in Microsoft’s Search Indexing help pages.
- Community testing and Forum posts show contextual experiments (context menu reorg, preloading) and measured preloading memory impact in earlier previews — those tests are useful for comparative context but are separate from indexing‑dedupe claims. For example, independent hands‑on tests measured preloading overhead in the range of a few dozen megabytes on the tested systems; that relates to the preload experiment, not the indexing deduplication. Treat preload and indexing changes as distinct efforts that may arrive in the same build set.
Expected user impact — realistic gains and limits
What the indexing deduplication should improve:
- Lower transient memory usage while searching: by avoiding repeated work, fewer concurrent indexing threads and caches are needed, so RAM used during active indexing/search will trend lower on affected systems.
- Less disk I/O and lower CPU spikes: especially on machines with HDDs or slow storage, deduplication should reduce thrashing and system slowdown caused by aggressive background indexing.
- Faster search results in many scenarios: because the indexer will avoid unnecessary reprocessing, queries that previously stalled behind heavy indexing work should return faster.
What this will not necessarily fix:
- Slow enumeration for network/NAS volumes: indexing dedupe helps local indexing mechanics, but slow network drivers, SMB performance or remapped drive quirks can still make folder enumeration and preview slow.
- Problems caused by third‑party shell extensions: slow or blocking context menu handlers (for example, poorly-behaved antivirus or cloud‑sync shell extensions) can still make right‑click menus and certain file operations sluggish; deduplication doesn’t remove those extension costs.
- Non-indexed searches (This PC full scans): if a user explicitly searches across non‑indexed locations, or uses “This PC” for a depth‑first scan, the indexer improvements don’t change the scanning cost of brute‑force queries.
Timeline, rollout and caveats
- Microsoft is testing these changes in Windows Insider Preview builds in the 26220. series; Build 26220.7523 is the documented release that contains the “eliminating duplicate file indexing operations” line in Microsoft’s own release notes. These features are experimental* and rolling out to selected Insider devices first.
- Public reporting from Windows Latest noted the feature being present in 26220.7523 and speculated a broader rollout in late January or February; that timeline is speculative and not a formal Microsoft commitment. Microsoft’s Insider posts do not pin a GA date — they describe experiments and staged rollouts. Treat third‑party timeline guesses as provisional.
- The indexing deduplication improvement is applied inside the indexer — users will not find a new File Explorer toggle for it. The change is delivered by the platform update and will be enabled for Insiders as Microsoft tests telemetry and compatibility.
Risks, unknowns and what to watch
- Measurement variability: indexing behavior depends heavily on machine profile, number and types of files, presence of cloud sync clients, external drives and installed shell extensions. Gains observed on one machine may not appear on another. Independent, controlled measurements will be required to quantify real ROI across device classes.
- Edge cases with reparse points and virtualized files: if the dedupe logic misidentifies equivalence across paths, there’s a risk of under‑indexing files reachable through multiple logical paths. Microsoft’s notes describe an improvement, not a functional redesign; community testing should pay special attention to symlinked content and NAS volumes. Flag any missing results in the Feedback Hub so Microsoft can triage regressions.
- Telemetry and privacy questions: Microsoft will rely on telemetry to validate the experiment. While the index content itself is local per Microsoft docs, changes that collect additional behavioral telemetry for tuning could raise privacy questions for enterprises unless documented clearly. Microsoft’s search docs reiterate that semantic indexing data is stored locally; still, admins should verify telemetry settings in their environments.
- Interaction with third‑party software: backup agents, antivirus scanners and third‑party search tools can interact with the indexer. Admins should test these interactions on representative hardware and software stacks before broad deployment. Community feedback in Insider channels has already flagged compatibility considerations for heavy shell‑extension environments.
Practical steps for users and IT teams (how to test and measure)
- Join the Windows Insider Program (Dev or Beta channel) if you want to test these changes before general release. Only enrolled devices in selected rings will see the experiments.
- Record baseline behavior:
- Use Task Manager, Resource Monitor or Process Explorer to note explorer.exe, SearchIndexer.exe and SearchProtocolHost.exe memory and CPU usage during active searches.
- Use Performance Monitor counters for Search: “Search Indexer\Indexing Total Items”, “Search Indexer\Indexing Rate”, and disk I/O counters for the indexer processes.
- Reproduce workload:
- Search for large numbers of image files, Office documents and nested folders as you would in production. Log timings for query response and time‑to‑first‑result.
- Install the Insider build and repeat tests:
- Compare CPU, disk I/O and peak memory during searches. Look for reduced I/O spikes and fewer concurrent indexing threads.
- Validate correctness:
- Confirm search results match expected items (especially for symlinked content, mounted drives and cloud placeholders). If anything is missing or incorrect, file feedback via the Feedback Hub with reproduction steps.
- Monitor for regressions:
- Watch for new exceptions or events in Event Viewer and for longer‑term indexing health (Settings > Privacy & security > Searching Windows shows indexing status).
Recommended tools:
- Process Explorer (Sysinternals),
- Windows Performance Recorder (WPR) + Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA),
- Procmon for low‑level tracing (use sparingly to avoid noise),
- Built‑in Indexing Options and Settings > Privacy & security > Searching Windows to review indexed locations and modes.
Recommendations — what sensible users and admins should do now
- For regular consumers: there’s no urgent action. If you don’t run Insider builds, wait for the public rollout and pick it up via Windows Update in Stable channels when Microsoft declares the change broadly available. If you are an Insider, test on non‑critical machines and share feedback through the Feedback Hub.
- For enterprise administrators:
- Pilot the Insider build on representative endpoint configurations that include VPNs, cloud sync clients (OneDrive, Dropbox), backup agents and any shell extensions.
- Measure impact on storage I/O and indexing load during typical user operations; check for regressions in search completeness.
- If your fleet includes machines with constrained RAM (4–8 GB) or heavy background indexing workloads, evaluate whether a staged rollout or a controlled opt‑in is required.
- Maintain clear channels for users to report missing search results so you can triage and correlate with telemetry.
Strengths of Microsoft’s approach — and where it still falls short
Strengths:
- Surgical, low‑risk engineering: targeting redundant work inside the indexer is a pragmatic way to deliver tangible improvements without a massive shell rewrite.
- Platform‑level fix: because the change is in the indexer, improvement benefits all apps that rely on the system index (Explorer, Outlook offline search, Edge history, etc..
- Insider‑driven telemetry: staged experiments minimize risk to production users and allow Microsoft to iterate before broad rollout.
Potential shortcomings:
- Not a catch‑all: this optimization doesn’t fix other major Explorer slow points such as slow third‑party shell handlers, network file system latency, or the fundamental rendering cost of the modern Explorer UI.
- Measurement complexity: gains will vary widely by device profile and software ecosystem; meaningful numbers will only come from controlled benchmarks and aggregated telemetry.
Conclusion
The indexing deduplication work Microsoft shipped to Insiders is a technically sensible and well‑targeted improvement: fixing redundant work is an efficient way to reduce CPU, disk I/O and transient RAM pressure during searches, and it benefits every app that relies on the system index. Microsoft’s own Insider notes explicitly call out the change and independent outlets and community testers have replicated the presence of search and context‑menu changes in the recent 26220-series builds. That said, this is an
incremental fix, not a wholesale cure for File Explorer’s varied performance complaints. Users and IT teams should treat the Insider experiments as an opportunity for early testing, measure before and after in representative environments, and file feedback if search completeness or behavior changes unexpectedly. Expect modest, practical improvements for many users — but keep an eye on the interaction between indexing, cloud providers and third‑party integrations that often drive the worst UX regressions.
If you manage Windows devices, plan a controlled pilot and use the Diagnostic and Indexing tools Microsoft provides to verify that search results remain accurate and that the claimed reductions in resource usage actually materialize in your environment. The pared‑down context menu and indexing optimizations are sensible steps toward making File Explorer feel snappier and less cluttered — but the broader performance story will depend on how Microsoft pairs these surface fixes with deeper investments in shell architecture and third‑party compatibility over the next releases.
Source: Windows Latest
Microsoft says Windows 11 File Explorer will soon use less RAM when you search files