How To: Use Device Search On Windows Phone 8.1

You can now search locally stored files using Bing.

Chandrakant 'CK' Isi
16th May 2014

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How To: Use Device Search On Windows Phone 8.1

Windows Phone 8.1 brought plethora of options to Microsoft's mobile platform. The noteworthy features being more customisable Start Screen, Action Centre, and virtual personal assistant Cortana. Apart from that, the Software-giant added many non-fancy features that make your life a lot easier. One such feature that most Windows Phone 8.1 users wouldn't know of is the ability to search your entire phone using Bing.

Using this feature, you get results from email, messaging, contacts, settings, calendar, music, and apps. Here's how to use this feature:

In first instance, we will search for a contact name to demonstrate how this feature works.

1. irrespective of which screen you are on, click the Search button that sits besides the Windows Start key. Bing Search will pop-up, type in your query.

2. Bing will display Web search results. Now swipe to the left, and you'd get Image search results. After a couple of swipes, the Bing will present results from Phone. As you see in the screenshot below, it has listed Sheldon from People Hub (contacts) and Messaging Hub.

Now let's see if we can find a song or artist in a similar way. I have a few Bruce Springsteen tracks on my phone, so let's try to find them without using the media player.

1. Go back to Bing search, type in the song or artist name. The phone will bring up Web search.

2. Swipe further to the left, and you'd get results from Phone. In this case, Bing is displaying the music files stored on my phone.

Bing is quite useful to quickly search for messages, emails, and media files on your Windows Phone 8.1 handsets. We hope that you found this tutorial useful. For more such stuff, watch this space.