Disable Search Engine for Magento 2

This module disables the default Magento 2 catalog search engine and related fulltext indexing—ideal for setups where search is handled outside of Magento (e.g., via a PIM, custom microservices, custom Elasticsearch implementation etc.).

🧭 Purpose

Magento 2 requires Elasticsearch or OpenSearch by default, even if your architecture does not use it for product search or catalog visibility.

This module completely disables Magento’s native search engine requirement, allowing you to:

• Simplify Magento's architecture
• Avoid unnecessary Elasticsearch & OpenSearch dependencies
• Prevent unwanted background processes like search indexation

Natively Magento do not offer the possibility to completely disable ElasticSearch, this module does.

✅ What it does

• Make Elasticsearch service no longer required to install and run Magento2.
• Set value "none" as default search engine
• Returns empty search results for all frontend catalog search queries
• Since Magento 2 Product Listing Pages (PLPs) rely on the search engine to fetch and filter products:
  • All PLPs will return no products when this module is enabled.
  • You must implement a custom product listing mechanism (via GraphQL, REST, or direct DB access) in your frontend or headless architecture.
• Uninstall magento modules:
  • magento/module-elasticsearch-catalog-permissions
  • magento/module-elasticsearch-catalog-permissions-graph-ql
  • magento/module-inventory-elasticsearch
  • magento/module-elasticsearch
  • magento/module-elasticsearch-6
  • magento/module-elasticsearch-7
  • magento/module-elasticsearch-8
  • magento/module-open-search

You can continue to index, compile, and run Magento without errors.

🧩 Compatibility

Magento Version	v2.3.0	v2.4.3	v2.4.4	v2.4.6	v2.4.8
Module Version	~0.0.0	~0.1.0	~0.2.0	~0.3.0	~0.4.0

Version Notes

• v0.1.0: adding indexer handler (Magento 2.4.3)
• v0.2.0: Reintroduced magento/module-advanced-search due to dependency with catalog-graph-ql (Magento 2.4.4)
• v0.3.0: Added support for uninstalling magento/module-open-search
• v0.4.0: Added support for uninstalling magento/module-elasticsearch-8

🚀 Installation

composer require zepgram/module-disable-search-engine
bin/magento module:enable Zepgram_DisableSearchEngine
bin/magento setup:upgrade

🐞 Issue

If you encounter any issues, please open a ticket on the GitHub repository or create a PR.