How to enable the new Bing Search panel in Windows 8.1 (aka ‘Blue’)

Update: This trick is no longer needed for Windows 8.1 RTM where the Bing-powered search pane is already on by default.

Windows Blue comes with a new Bing-powered search pane for the Start screen. Although it is disabled by default, it is easy to enable  it.

  • Open registry editor and navigate to the following key: 
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SearchPane

    Tip:  See our Windows Registry Editor fundamentals

  • Create here a new DWORD value, name it NewSearchPane and set it to 1.
  • Sign out and sign in back, and you will get the following search pane:

Via h0x0d's twitter

Thanks to my friend Nick for pointing me to this.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

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