By default, Cortana has a search bar enabled right next to your Windows button on Windows 10 and the color is black. Many cases came forward where the color of the search bar turned white upon updating to Fall Creators Update 1709. This feature is reportedly added by Microsoft which reflect two themes (Dark and Light). If you choose the light theme, the color will be white; otherwise, it will be black. However, many people reported that despite switching the theme to dark, the search bar was kept white. There are various workarounds available to solve this problem. Take a look.

Solution 1: Changing Default App Mode

This is the new feature introduced by Microsoft in Fall Creators Update 1709. There are two modes available to you; Light and Dark. By default, the mode is set to Light. You can try changing the mode to Dark and check if this solves the problem in question. Do note that all your applications will also switch from light (white) background to a dark (black) background.

Solution 2: Changing Location of your Computer

In this workaround, we change the location to a country where Cortana isn’t available. Mostly these countries include Yemen, Gabon etc. Follow the instruction mentioned below.

Note: If this doesn’t work, repeat steps 1-4 again (make sure you are selecting a country where Cortana isn’t available). Instead of signing out, simply restart your computer. Then change back to your normal country and perform the restart again.

Solution 3: Changing Registry Value

As a last resort, we can try changing the registry value. Do note that the registry editor is a powerful tool and requires extreme care when editing keys. Changing keys which you have no knowledge of might render your computer unusable. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search\Flighting\0\WhiteSearchBox

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search\Flighting\0\WhiteSearchBox If this file path doesn’t open/isn’t present, don’t worry. Just restart your computer and make sure that the changes we made are permanent.

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