Where are windows 10 images stored?

Let’s tell you where to find images from “Windows: Interesting” (Windows Spotlight) in Windows 10 - I’m sure that many users who use this function of automatically changing the image on the computer’s lock screen would not mind saving a couple of stunningly beautiful photos from there.

It was my beloved wife who suggested this article to me, as often happens. Yesterday she really liked the next image on the computer lock screen from “Windows: Interesting” and thanks to “You’re a computer geek,” I voluntarily and forcibly learned to fish out these photos from the wilds of the Windows 10 operating system (by the way, in two ways).

Windows: interesting

For those who didn’t know in the tank - in the latest version of the operating system It is possible, in addition to photos and slide shows, to install on the computer lock screen automatically changing images, which (if I’m not mistaken - once a day) are downloaded from the manufacturers’ servers.

Where and how to turn on Windows Spotlight

To begin with, I’ll show you where this whole thing comes into play. Through we go into Control Panel"Parameters" of the system...

...and dive into the “Personalization” section...

There, in the “Lock Screen” item, the periodic change of images described in this article is set...

This “yummy” in Windows 10 has won the universal love of users with its beautiful images and always an unexpected wow effect the next time you start the computer.

Where are Windows Explore images stored?

First, you need to enable the display of hidden folders (items) in the built-in file manager through the “View” menu item in any window...

Next, go to the system drive (usually drive “C”) and click on the “Users” folder. We find there a directory under the username of your computer, where we need a translucent “AppData” folder. Already hidden in it is the “Local” folder in which “Packages” lives. Carefully click on it and look for a folder with a long name “Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy”...

Are you tired yet? There are literally a couple of “steps” left - in the “LocalState” folder...

...You will find the “Assets” folder...

...in which ours will be from the lock screen...

Like this long path to the treasured folder…

Don’t worry, your image previews (thumbnails) are not broken in Explorer - you just need to copy all the files from this folder (for example, to a new folder on your desktop)...

...and rename them individually...

…by giving the extension “.jpg”…

Hallelujah…

Now you can safely run any image viewer and use it to choose the most beautiful masterpieces.

Some images will be in portrait orientation - this is for Windows 10 Mobile if you happy owner of a smartphone with this shell and use one account on several devices.

You will also see square icons for some games and applications from the Windows Store - just ignore them.

A quick way to remove images from Windows Explore

There is another, faster way to remove images from “Windows: Interesting” in Windows 10 - using a special script written by kind people and posted on the network. It doesn’t do anything scary, virus or spyware - it just takes out all the images from “Windows: Interesting” with one click and copies them to your desktop...

...already renamed...

Really cool pictures periodically appear on the Windows 10 lockscreen. How can I save them for myself (to cover my desktop, for example)? This cannot be done directly, but there is still one way.

Windows 10 stores these images (and a few other things) directly on your computer as files with a custom extension. Our task is to find the location where the screensavers are stored, copy them to a more convenient location and assign the files the “correct” extension. Let's get started!

1. Make sure Windows 10 shows hidden files and folders on your computer. To check this, open Explorer and click on the View tab. There should be a check mark opposite the Hidden elements item.
2. Through Search, go to %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets
You will be taken to an Assets folder with a large number of files.
3. Copy all the files into a separate folder and place it in a convenient place for you - for example, on your desktop.
4. In the new folder, click File - Open Command Prompt - Open Command Prompt as Administrator.

5. Enter the following command: ren *.* *.jpg

6. Return to the folder. Now there are Windows 10 screensaver photos mixed in with the “garbage”. It’s easy to separate the wheat from the chaff – just sort the files by size. The largest ones will be at the top. These are the ones we need, everything else can be safely deleted.

The desktop wallpaper that comes with Windows 10 is very cute. Many users like this wallpaper. Readers asked me where they are stored on disk. If you're interested in finding them and want to use them somewhere else, say in your dual boot operating system like Linux or Windows 7, here's how to find them.
Traditionally, wallpapers in Windows are stored in the C:\Windows\Web\Wallpapers folder. To find the default wallpaper in Windows 10, open File Explorer by pressing Win + E on your keyboard. Type or copy and paste the following path into the address bar:

C:\Windows\Web
There you will find 3 folders which contain all the default desktop backgrounds for Windows 10 − 4K, Screen, And Wallpaper.

The 4K folder contains various default wallpaper sizes known as "hero window" images. These images are used for different screen orientations on supported devices. They are also available in 4K resolution (3840 x 2160).

Folder Screen- The screen includes default images used to block the screen background.

Note: When the background is enabled, Windows 10 downloads stunning lock screen wallpapers from the Internet automatically. The OS stores them elsewhere. To know more, please refer to the following article: Where to find lock screen images in Windows 10?

Last folder Wallpaper, contains default desktop backgrounds. They are located in three folders:

Folder Wallpaper
This folder stores images for the built-in “flowers” theme.

Wallpaper folder following

The Windows folder only comes with one background image.

Folder Windows Desktop Wallpaper

Windows 10 OS - this folder contains the default backgrounds that are displayed in the application settings out of the box.

You might be wondering why the folder has the name "web" in its path when the images are not web related. This is all because of the Active Desktop feature in earlier versions of Windows. In Windows 95 we didn't have the ability to use *.jpg images as desktop backgrounds. Later, when Microsoft released Internet Explorer version 4, it brought the Active Desktop feature. Its key feature is the ability to display your favorite web content directly on your desktop. It also had an advanced Explorer with the ability to view folders as web pages. JPEG images can also be used as desktop backgrounds. Therefore, starting from Windows 98, Windows saves all images to a web folder

%userprofile%\appdata\local\Microsoft\Windows\themes

Modern versions of Windows do not have any support for active desktop or web browsing in Explorer, but the folder structure remains the same today. Windows 10 has basically the same wallpaper folder structure and allows you to customize the wallpaper image quality.

Setting your desktop wallpaper is a fairly simple topic, almost everyone knows how to set or change the wallpaper on their Windows 10 desktop. All this, although it has changed compared to previous versions of the OS, is not so much that it could cause significant difficulties.

But some other nuances may not be obvious, especially for novice users, for example: how to change the wallpaper on a non-activated Windows 10, set up automatic wallpaper change, why photos on the desktop lose quality, where they are stored by default and is it possible to make animated wallpapers on Desktop. All this is the subject of this article.

How to set (change) Windows 10 desktop wallpaper

The first and simplest thing is how to install your picture or image on your desktop. To do this in Windows 10, just right-click on an empty space on the desktop and select the “Personalization” menu item.

In the “Background” section of the personalization settings, select “Photo” (if the choice is not available, since the system is not activated, information on how to get around this is below), and then - a photo from the proposed list, or by clicking on the “Browse” button, set your own image as your desktop wallpaper (which can be stored in any folder on your computer).

Among other settings, wallpaper layout options include Expand, Stretch, Fill, Fit, Tile, and Center. If the photo does not match the resolution or proportions of the screen, you can make the wallpaper look more pleasing using these options, but I recommend just finding a wallpaper that matches the resolution of your screen.

The first problem may await you right there: if everything is not in order with the activation of Windows 10, in the personalization settings you will see a message that “To personalize your computer, you need to activate Windows.”

However, even in this case, you have the opportunity to change your desktop wallpaper:

So, even if your system is not activated, you can still change your desktop wallpaper.

Automatic wallpaper change

Windows 10 supports slide shows on the desktop, i.e. automatic change of wallpaper among those chosen by you. To use this feature, in the personalization options, in the “Background” field, select “Slideshow”.

After this, you can set the following parameters:

A folder containing the desktop wallpaper that should be used (when selected, it is the folder that is selected, i.e. after clicking “Browse” and entering the folder with images, you will see that it is “Empty”, this is the normal operation of this function in Windows 10, the contained wallpaper will still be shown on the desktop).
The interval for automatically changing the wallpaper (they can also be changed to the following in the right-click menu on the desktop).
The order and type of arrangement on the desktop.

Nothing complicated, and for some users who are bored of looking at the same picture all the time, the function may be useful.

Where are Windows 10 desktop wallpapers stored?

One of the frequently asked questions regarding the functionality of desktop images in Windows 10 is where the standard wallpaper folder is located on the computer. The answer is not entirely clear, but it may be useful for those interested.

These are all the main locations where Windows 10 wallpapers are stored, excluding the folders on your computer where you store them yourself.

Desktop wallpaper quality

One of the frequent complaints from users is the poor quality of wallpaper on their desktop. The reasons for this may be the following:

The wallpaper resolution does not match your screen resolution. Those. If your monitor has a resolution of 1920x1080, you should use the wallpaper in the same resolution, without using the "Wide", "Stretch", "Fill", "Fit" options in the wallpaper settings settings. The best option is “Center” (or “Tile” for mosaics).
Windows 10 re-encodes wallpapers that were in excellent quality, compressing them into Jpegs in its own way, resulting in poorer quality. This can be bypassed; below is how to do it.

To ensure that when installing wallpapers in Windows 10 they do not lose quality (or lose less significantly), you can change one of the registry parameters that determines the jpeg compression parameters.

Go to the registry editor (Win+R, enter regedit) and go to the section HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\ Desktop
By right-clicking on the right side of the Registry Editor, create a new DWORD value named JPEGImportQuality
Double-click on the newly created parameter and set it to a value from 60 to 100, where 100 is the maximum image quality (without compression).

Close Registry Editor, restart your computer or restart File Explorer, and reinstall your desktop wallpaper so that it appears in good quality.

The second option to use high-quality wallpaper on your desktop is to replace the file TranscodedWallpaper V C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes your original file.

Animated wallpaper in Windows 10

The question about how to make live animated wallpaper in Windows 10 and set a video as a desktop background is one of the most frequently asked questions among users. The OS itself does not have built-in functions for these purposes, and the only solution is to use third-party software.

What can be recommended, and what definitely works, is the DeskScapes program, which, however, is paid. Moreover, the functionality is not limited to animated wallpapers. You can download DeskScapes from the official website http://www.stardock.com/products/deskscapes/

I conclude here: I hope you found here something that you didn’t know about desktop wallpaper before and that turned out to be useful.

Surely many users have noticed the automatic change of wallpaper for the Windows 10 lock screen. Among them, there are often very beautiful landscapes that I would like to see on my desktop all the time, and not just when unlocking my PC. First of all, it is worth saying that a special function is responsible for automatically loading and changing wallpapers - Windows spotlight, or in Russian “Windows: interesting”.

If you still do not have it enabled, then you need to activate it in the Settings -> Personalization -> Lock screen -> Background section:

After some time, a sufficient number of images will accumulate in the operating system, from which you can select the pictures you like and set them as your desktop wallpaper.

To get pictures from “Windows: Interesting”, first of all you need to open the Explorer window and go to the tab View, here we find the tile " Show or hide", in the list that appears, check two items " Filename extensions" And " Hidden elements»:

Open drive “C” and find the folder Users:

C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets

Or you can simply copy this path into the address bar of the window and press Enter:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets

As a result, a folder with files without an extension will open, these are the images from the Windows lock screen. In order to turn them into full-fledged pictures, you need to rename the files by adding the .jpg extension:

Immediately after renaming, you can view the pictures in the usual way, and also set them as desktop wallpaper:

Also, for faster export of pictures from “Interesting”, we suggest using a ready-made .vbs script – (0.01 MB)

Download the archive and run the file spotlight_images.vbs

With its help, all files from the Assets folder are automatically renamed to JPG images and added to a separate directory on the desktop:

This method is completely safe and very convenient, because... allows you to save a lot of time. Please note that not all pictures in the new folder have previews, these files are not images and are not suitable for use.