How to Display a Custom Message at the Windows 10 Login Screen

This brief guide will show you exactly how to create a custom message that’s displayed before anyone can sign in to your Windows 10 laptop/desktop/tablet. One of many reasons you may want to do this is so that you can include information about how to return your laptop or tablet if it’s lost or stolen (ie. a reward message, contact information etc). Whatever your reason, here’s how you change the text that’s displayed right before the “log in” screen in Windows 10.

Note: it’s worth mentioning that these steps also work in Windows 7 and 8, however the screenshots used in this tutorial are specific to Windows 10.

1. Start out by typing regedit into the Windows 10 “Search” box.
2. Select Regedit – Run command from the search result list.
3. Click Yes when prompted to confirm you want to allow regedit to make system changes.
4. Now you’ll be presented with the main Regedit window. In order to add a message, we’re going to edit two specific registry entries, or “keys”. To navigate to these keys, start out by clicking the small “arrow” next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. This should display the first (of several) sub-menus. From this first sub-menu, select the arrow next to SOFTWARE to expand that menu. Then repeat the process for the Microsoft entry.
5. Continue by selecting the arrow next to Windows then Current Version and finally Policies. This time select System by clicking on it once (instead of clicking the arrow next to it).
6. In the main window of the Regedit App, look for the entry titled legalnoticecaption and double-click it.
7. In the Value data: field, enter the text that you’d like to appear as the “heading” of your message. Something along the lines of “Please Read” or other descriptive/eye-catching wording is generally best. Click OK when you’re done.
8. Back in the main window of Regedit, double-click the entry titled legalnoticetext (which should be directly below “legalnoticecaption”).

9. In the Value data: field enter the text you’d like to appear as the message itself. Click OK when you’re done.
10. Exit out of Regedit, close any open Apps (saving your work first, of course) – and then restart your PC.
11. From now on, before anyone is able to login to your PC they’ll be prompted with the message you just created. They’ll have to hit Enter/Return or click the OK button in order to continue to the sign-in window.
12. Congrats, you’re all done! :)