Change Cortana’s Search Box Text in Windows 10

Windows 10 "Redstone 2", which will eventually become Windows 10 version 1703 when released, has a number of tweaks for Cortana to customize its look and appearance. It is possible to move the search box to the top of the search pane, customize its border color and enable search and submit glyph icons. Today we will see how to change the default text displayed in the Cortana's search box in Windows 10.

As of this writing, the Redstone 2 branch is represented by Windows 10 build 14946 which was released for Fast Ring Insiders a few days ago. So I have tested this tweak in build 14946. It might not be working in older builds. Also, Microsoft can remove it any time they want. Keep this in mind if you are running a build other than 14946.

It allows you to perform the following tweaks.

Change Cortana's Search Box Text in Windows 10
By default, the search box has the following text visible in the taskbar:

Ask me anything

It is possible to change this text to anything you want.

Do it as follows.

1. Open Registry Editor.
2. Go to the following key:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search\Flighting

   If you have no such key, then just create it.
   Tip: you can quickly open the Registry editor app at the desired key. See the following article: How to jump to the desired registry key with one click.

3. Here, modify two DWORD values called Current and RotateFlight. Set their value data to 0.
4. Now, go to the following key:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search\Flighting\0\SearchBoxText

   If the SearchBoxText subkey doesn't exist in your Registry, then just create it.

   

5. Here, create or modify the string (REG_SZ) parameter called "Value" and set it to the desired text you want. It will be displayed in the Cortana's search box.
   
6. Sign out from your Windows 10 account and sign in back to make the changes take effect. Alternatively, you can restart the Explorer shell.

You are done!
Before:

After:

You can save your time and use Winaero Tweaker. It comes with the following option:

You can download Winaero Tweaker here:

Download Winaero Tweaker

Once again, remember that this feature can be removed by Microsoft at any moment, since it is an experimental option. Or, they might add it to the stable release of Windows 10 version 1703, if they find it useful.

Many thanks to Inside Windows for this excellent discovery.

That's it.