urShadow's Blog: How to customize Universal Search on a BlackBerry smartphone

Today I’m going to show you how to customize the Universal Search feature on your BlackBerry® 6 or BlackBerry® 7 OS smartphone to cut out unwanted search results. I’ll also show you how to disable the web suggestions and clear the search history.

If you are new to BlackBerry devices or would like to learn more about the Universal Search feature, check out our previous blog post that explains how to use Universal Search. For now, let’s get started by accessing the Search setting — from there we can begin customizing Universal Search:

From the Home screen or from within a folder select “Options”
Select “Device” and then “Search”.

Search History

Simply put, Search History displays your most recent searches in the Universal Search window. There are two options for Search History in settings: “Delete Search History,” which clears all previous search items from the device, and “Show Search History,” which allows you to disable this feature all together.

Web Suggestions

When you enter a search term into Universal Search, not only are results from your BlackBerry smartphone displayed but also search engine results from the web.

To disable this feature so only your device is searched, clear the check box next to Show Web Suggestions, then press the Menu key and select “Save.”

Data Sources

Each time you enter a search term, Universal Search looks though each one of these categories for matching results. Clear the check box next to any of the items you want omitted from the search. You can clear all the check boxes at once by pressing the Menu key followed by “Deselect All.” If you have previously cleared categories, you also have the option of choosing “Select All” to re-select them.

Note: Selecting “Deselect All” or “Select All” affects the Extended Providers category check boxes as well.

Extended Providers

The categories listed under Extended Providers are apps which have their own search, selecting one of these items in Universal Search will provide results from that apps search feature. To exclude one of these apps from the search results simply clear the check box next to it, then press the Menu key and select “Save.”