Click an empty patch of your desktop and Bing opens. The wallpaper app did that.

You click an empty bit of the desktop. Not an icon, not a menu, just the background. A browser window opens with a Bing search for whatever is in the picture. If you have Microsoft's free Bing Wallpaper app installed, that is not a glitch. It is the app doing its job, and the job has quietly changed.

Microsoft tried this in October 2025 and took a fair amount of criticism, but back then the app's settings carried a switch labelled "Desktop click opens Bing". It was on by default, which was already cheeky, yet you could find it and turn it off. Windows Latest reports the behaviour is back in the current version and the switch is not. It fires roughly once every 24 hours, often enough to irritate and rare enough that most people never connect it to a wallpaper app they installed months ago. The same app also nags you to make Bing the default search engine in whatever browser you use, Chrome and Firefox included.

Bing Wallpaper is entirely optional. Nothing in Windows 11 depends on it. If all you wanted was a fresh picture each morning, Windows Spotlight is built in, pulls from the same photo library, and does nothing to your clicks. Open Settings, Apps, Installed apps, find Bing Wallpaper and uninstall it, then right-click the desktop, choose Personalise, Background, and pick Windows Spotlight.

Software like this sits in an awkward grey zone, which is roughly where Tendvane's Safety check for unwanted software looks: programs that are technically legitimate but change your browser and your desktop without being asked.