fail to change placeholder color with Bootstrap 3

Two questions:

1. I am trying to make the placeholder text white. But it doesn't work. I am using Bootstrap 3. JSFiddle demo

2. Another question is how do I change placeholder color not globally. That is, I have multiple fields, I want only one field to have white placeholder, all the others remain in default color.

Thanks in advance.

html:

<form id="search-form" class="navbar-form navbar-left" role="search">
    <div class="">
        <div class="right-inner-addon"> <i class="icon-search search-submit"></i>
            <input type="search" class="form-control" placeholder="search" />
        </div>
    </div>
</form>

css:

.right-inner-addon {
    position: relative;
}
.right-inner-addon input {
    padding-right: 30px;
    background-color:#303030;
    font-size: 13px;
    color:white;

}
.right-inner-addon i {
    position: absolute;
    right: 0px;
    padding: 10px 12px;
    /*  pointer-events: none; */
    cursor: pointer;
    color:white;
}


/* do not group these rules*/
::-webkit-input-placeholder { color: white; }
FF 4-18 
:-moz-placeholder           { color: white; }
 FF 19+
::-moz-placeholder          { color: white; }
 IE 10+
:-ms-input-placeholder      { color: white; } 

Assign the placeholder to a class selector like this:

.form-control::-webkit-input-placeholder { color: white; }  /* WebKit, Blink, Edge */
.form-control:-moz-placeholder { color: white; }  /* Mozilla Firefox 4 to 18 */
.form-control::-moz-placeholder { color: white; }  /* Mozilla Firefox 19+ */
.form-control:-ms-input-placeholder { color: white; }  /* Internet Explorer 10-11 */
.form-control::-ms-input-placeholder { color: white; }  /* Microsoft Edge */

It will work then since a stronger selector was probably overriding your global. I'm on a tablet so i cant inspect and confirm which stronger selector it was :) But it does work I tried it in your fiddle.

This also answers your second question. By assigning it to a class or id and giving an input only that class you can control what inputs to style.

There was an issue posted here about this: https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/14107

The issue was solved by this commit: https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/commit/bd292ca3b89da982abf34473318c77ace3417fb5

The solution therefore is to override it back to #999 and not white as suggested (and also overriding all bootstraps styles, not just for webkit-styles):

.form-control::-moz-placeholder {
  color: #999;
}
.form-control:-ms-input-placeholder {
  color: #999;
}
.form-control::-webkit-input-placeholder {
  color: #999;
}

###A Possible Gotcha

Recommended Sanity Check - Make sure to add the form-control class to your inputs.

If you have bootstrap css loaded on your page, but your inputs don't have the
class="form-control" then placeholder CSS selector won't apply to them.

Example markup from the docs:

https://puu.sh/ilsIe/e1360d2963.png"/>

I know this didn't apply to the OP's markup but as I missed this at first and spent a little bit of effort trying to debug it, I'm posting this answer to help others.

I'm using Bootstrap 4 and Dennis Puzak's solution does not work for me.

The next solution works for me

.form-control::placeholder { color: white;} /* Chrome, Firefox, Opera*/
:-ms-input-placeholder.form-control { color: white; }  /* Internet Explorer*/
.form-control::-ms-input-placeholder { color: white; }  /* Microsoft Edge*/

Bootstrap has 3 lines of CSS, within your bootstrap.css generated file that control the placeholder text color:

.form-control::-moz-placeholder {
  color: #999999;
  opacity: 1;
}
.form-control:-ms-input-placeholder {
  color: #999999;
}
.form-control::-webkit-input-placeholder {
  color: #999999;
}

Now if you add this to your own CSS file it won't override bootstrap's because it is less specific. So assmuning your form inside a

form .form-control::-moz-placeholder {
  color: #fff;
  opacity: 1;
}
form .form-control:-ms-input-placeholder {
  color: #fff;
}
form .form-control::-webkit-input-placeholder {
  color: #fff;
}

The others did not work in my case (Bootstrap 4). Here is the solution I used.

html .form-control::-webkit-input-placeholder { color:white; }
html .form-control:-moz-placeholder { color:white; }
html .form-control::-moz-placeholder { color:white; }
html .form-control:-ms-input-placeholder { color:white; }

If we use a stronger selector (html first), we don't need to use the hacky value !important.

This overrides bootstraps CSS as we use a higher level of specificity to target .form-control elements (html first instead of .form-control first).

I think qwertzman is on the right track for the best solution to this.

If you only wanted to style a specific placeholder, then his answer still holds true.

But if you want to override the colour of all placeholders, (which is more probable) and if you are already compiling your own custom Bootstrap LESS, the answer is even simpler!

Override this LESS variable: @input-color-placeholder

Boostrap Placeholder Mixin:

@mixin placeholder($color: $input-color-placeholder) {
  // Firefox
  &::-moz-placeholder {
    color: $color;
    opacity: 1; // Override Firefox's unusual default opacity; see https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/11526
  }
  &:-ms-input-placeholder { color: $color; } // Internet Explorer 10+
  &::-webkit-input-placeholder  { color: $color; } // Safari and Chrome
}

now call it:

@include placeholder($white);

You should check out this answer : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2610497/change-an-inputs-html5-placeholder-color-with-css

Work on most browser, the solution in this thread is not working on FF 30+ for example

With LESS the actual mixin is in vendor-prefixes.less

.placeholder(@color: @input-color-placeholder) {
...
}

This mixin is called in forms.less on line 133:

.placeholder();

Your solution in LESS is:

.placeholder(#fff);

Imho the best way to go. Just use Winless or a composer compiler like Gulp/Grunt works, too and even better/faster.