[Tip] Disable Visual Search Icon and Image Hover Menu in Microsoft Edge

In Microsoft Edge web browser, if you hover mouse cursor over an image present on a website, a small icon or button appears at the top-right corner of the image. If you click on this tiny icon, Microsoft Edge searches for the selected image on web using Bing image search tool. This feature is called “Visual Search“. If you don’t like the visual search icon automatically appearing on images, this article will help you in getting rid of it.

Following screenshot shows Visual Search icon/button appearing over an image in Microsoft Edge browser:

Visual Search option is also available in image context menu. If you right-click on an image present on a website, you’ll find Visual Search option and new “Edit Image” option present in the context menu as shown in following screenshot:

This new Visual Search option is a part of Smart Explore (or Hover Menu) functionality present in Microsoft Edge which has been developed to offer the users contextual options to discover and explore more contents while browsing the Internet.

Although Visual Search feature is a useful addition to Microsoft Edge but some people might not like the hover icon which automatically appears on images.

Fortunately, Microsoft has provided options to hide or remove the Visual Search icon. You can completely disable its hover icon as well as image context menu option using Edge Settings page.

Following steps will help you in disabling or removing Visual Search hover icon and context menu option in Microsoft Edge web browser:

METHOD 1: Quickly Hide Visual Search Icon on Image Hover

This is the quickest way to disable Visual Search hover icon in Edge. When you hover the mouse cursor over an image and the Visual Search icon appears, DO NOT click on the icon but again hover mouse cursor over Visual Search icon and you’ll get a new small 3-dots menu icon below the Visual Search icon.

Click on the tiny 3-dots icon and you’ll get option to hide the Visual Search icon permanently as shown in following screenshot:

If you want to hide the Visual Search icon for all websites, click on Hide always option and the Visual Search icon will be disabled completely.

If you want to hide the Visual Search icon for the opened website only (per website), click on Hide for this site option and the Visual Search icon will no longer appear on the selected website.

METHOD 2: Remove Visual Search Image Hover Icon and Context Menu Option

If you want to remove Visual Search icon on image hover as well as from image context menu, you can do this using Edge Settings page as mentioned in below steps:

1. Select Settings option from the 3-dots icon which appears when you hover over Visual Search icon on an image.

OR

Click on the main 3-dots menu button present at the right-side of the toolbar in Edge and select Settings option from the main menu. Now click on Appearance tab in left sidebar and in right-side pane, scroll down and click on Hover Menu option present under Context Menus section.

OR

You can also directly open Visual Search Settings page using edge://settings/appearance/hoverMenu URL in address bar.

2. Now turn off both the available options related to Visual Search and Hover Menu:

• Show hover menu on image hover
• Show visual search in context menu

That’s it. It’ll immediately remove Visual Search image hover icon as well as its option from image context menu.

Also Check:

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