Bing Desktop is a free software that brings the Bing.com search engine to your desktop, plus automatically set the Bing homepage image to your desktop background. It’s a handy and lightweight application developed by Microsoft that provides a tiny desktop search bar and allow users to search anything on Bing, without having to open their browser. Apart from that, it offers direct access to latest news, trending images, top videos, and your Facebook feed.
Bing Desktop automatically sets Bing homepage image to your desktop background everyday, and if you don’t like it, you can change it manually by choosing a different background from the images of past nine days.
Let’s first see how you can download and install Bing Desktop on your system. Then we will discuss all it features in detail.
Download and Install Bing Desktop:
Bing Desktop is available as a freeware and can be downloaded easily from Microsoft’s official website using the link given at the end of this article. The download will consist of a setup file of size around 5 MB, which you need to double-click on to install Bing Desktop to your system.
After successfully installing Bing Desktop, the setup wizard will show some options to change a couple of settings in your system. This includes the following:
- Making Bing homepage image your desktop background.
- Setting Internet Explorer your default browser.
- Setting your browser homepage to MSN.
- Setting Bing as your default search provider.
Check the options you want to keep and uncheck rest of them. Finally click on “Finish” button. A moment later, the background of your desktop will change to the Bing homepage image and your system turns off to activate necessary changes. Restart your system to enjoy using Bing Desktop on your system.
Let’s now see what all you can do with this free desktop Bing toolbar.
Search Bing from your desktop, Set Bing Homepage Images as Wallpaper using Bing Desktop:
Search Bing:
Bing desktop launches as a tiny desktop toolbar on your system, which you can pick and move anywhere. You can type whatever you want to search on Bing in the search bar. As you start typing Bing will display suggestion from the search history, which you can make use of or clear anytime. The search results will open in your default browser and let you view each result in different browser tabs.
Set Bing Homepage Image as Desktop Background:
When you install Bing Desktop, your desktop background automatically changes to the homepage image of Bing.com. If you don’t wan to keep it, you can browse from the Bing Images of last 9 days and manually set any of them as your desktop background.
Get Access to Top News, Trending Images, and Top Videos:
Bing Desktop also provides direct access to the latest news, trending images on web, and top videos, without having to open your browser. Only limited items will be displayed at a time in the drop-down window; you can go back and forth between various items using the backward and forward arrow present at the bottom of the window. A single click on any of them will open the whole web page containing that item in a new browser tab.
Get Access to Facebook Feed:
Bing Desktop also lets you visit your Facebook account from within this desktop toolbar, without having to open your Browser window.
Change Bing Desktop theme:
Bing Desktop also lets you change its default theme color and set it to the one you want. Also, you can minimize it to system tray or set to launch at system start up.
These were the main features offered by Bing Desktop. Here is a quick summary.
Key Features of Bing Desktop:
- Free Windows software to access Bing.com from a tiny desktop search bar.
- Trusted app by Microsoft Corporation.
- Automatically update desktop background to daily Bing homepage image.
- Lets you manually choose and set Bing Images to desktop background.
- Display search suggestions.
- Access to latest news, top images and videos.
- Access to Facebook account.
- Changeable theme colors.
- Available in different languages.
- Run at system start up.
- Minimizes to toolbar and system tray.
- Easy to use.
- Handy and lightweight.
Also check how to set video as desktop background.
System Requirements:
Bing Desktop can run on the following versions of Windows:
- Windows 8
- Windows Server 2008 R2
- Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
- Windows 7
- Windows 7 Service Pack 1
- Windows Server 2012
- Windows Vista
- Windows XP Professional Edition
- Windows XP Service Pack 3
The Final Verdict:
Bing Desktop is a nice free Windows app that lets you access Bing through a small desktop toolbar, without having to open the browser all the time. It also provides some custom setting options and daily updates your desktop background to the beautiful Bing homepage images. It’s a handy and and lightweight app that runs smoothly without any crash or system slowdown. Download free and give it a try.
