Where are the standard Windows 10 wallpapers? Automatic wallpaper change. Where and how to turn on Windows Spotlight
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.
Have you been using the new operating system for a long time, but still have no idea where the pictures used for the lock screen in Windows 10 are? Today we will touch on this issue and several related ones, for example, how to steal the desired picture for yourself.
While working in the “ten”, users noticed that the lock screen screen saver periodically changes in the operating system. Sometimes you come across very beautiful pictures that you want to use as a desktop background.
Just to do this you need to find out where these images are stored. Advanced users even tried to find all the graphic files stored in the directories of the system volume, but everything was in vain; the required images were never found. Why it happened that the search did not find the necessary files, we will consider below.
It happens that the display of pictures is deactivated in the settings (this is especially true for fans of builds aimed at maximum performance of Windows 10). You can enable them, select the displayed photo, play pictures as a slide show, and even change the directory with the required photos as follows.
- Open the “Options” menu using the Win+I key combination.
- Let's go to the personalization section.
- Make the “Lock Screen” tab active.
- Set the first “Background” option to “Windows: Interesting”.
You can check if everything looks as intended by pressing the Win+L key combination, which will bring up the lock screen.
After selecting “Photos,” you will be able to replace the background from the lock screen in Windows 10, and the “Slideshow” option will allow you to specify several pictures or directories with graphic files that will be used as slides.
Save the graphic file from the lock screen to your collection
Any image that is proposed to be set as the lock screen background is stored in the user's directory under the path - C:\Users\Your_Username\AppData
\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\. Find the “Assets” folder here and open it.
One caveat! You may not be able to see the AppData directory just like that, since it is a system directory and therefore has the “Hidden” attribute. By default, such file system objects are not displayed in the standard Explorer window, but this is quite easy to fix with literally a single click of the mouse.
1. Open the explorer window Win+E or through a shortcut.
2. Call the main menu item called “View”.
3. Check the “Hidden elements” checkbox.
The same is done through the “Folder Options”.
1. Call the item “Change folder and search settings”.
2. In the “View” tab, move the switch next to the last option to the “Show hidden files and folders” position.
After this, you can open the “Assets” folder, where the lock screen images in Windows 10 are located.
You won’t be able to view a single picture just like that, unless you open an image viewer and drag a file with a long name, which is a set of characters, into its window.
All these files are images, but without an extension, and to view them you should add its extension - jpg - to the end of the file. The absence of these characters is the reason why the Windows 10 search engine could not detect the graphic files used as background images for the lock screen.
If one photo is renamed quickly, then manually changing the names of several dozen documents takes a long time. Let's look at how to change file extensions in batches.
1. Copy all the images to a directory that will be located in a different folder from the system folder.
2. Rename all files to any name you like, and set the images to the “.jpg” format.
Now you can switch the way directory items are visualized to “Large Icons” or “Thumbnails” and select the images you need or delete unnecessary ones.
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.
Setting up desktop wallpaper is a fairly simple topic; almost everyone knows how to set or change the wallpaper on the Windows 10 desktop. Although all this has changed compared to previous versions of the operating system, it is not so much as to cause significant difficulties.
But some other nuances may not be so obvious, for example, how to change the wallpaper of Windows 10, which is not activated, set up automatic wallpaper change, why the quality of photos on the desktop is lost, where the default wallpaper is stored and whether it is possible to install animated ones on the desktop wallpaper.
How to set (change) Windows 10 desktop wallpaper
The first is how to set your own image or picture on your desktop. To do this, in Windows 10, right-click on an empty area of the desktop, and then select “Personalization.”
In the “Background” tab of the personalization settings, select “Photo”, and then select a photo from the available list, or by clicking on the “Browse” button, set your own image as your desktop wallpaper.
In addition to other settings, for wallpaper there are options in the “Stretch”, “Expand”, “Fill”, “Tile”, “Fit” and “Center” tabs. If the photo does not match the screen proportions or resolution, then you can adjust the wallpaper to a more acceptable look using the specified options, but it is better to find wallpaper that matches the screen resolution.
This is where the first problem may arise: if something is wrong with the activation of Windows 10, the message “You need to activate Windows to personalize your computer” will appear in the personalization settings.
But even in this case, it is possible to change the wallpaper on your desktop:
1. Select any image on your PC, right-click on it and select “Set as desktop background image.”
2. A similar function is also available in Internet Explorer: if you open an image in this browser and right-click on it, you can use it as a background image.
So, even if the system is not activated, you can still change your desktop wallpaper.
Automatic wallpaper change
Windows 10 has support for slide shows on the desktop, that is, automatic changing of wallpapers from those selected by the user. To use this feature, in the personalization parameters, in the “Background” tab, select “Slideshow”.
After this, you can set the following parameters:
- A folder that contains desktop wallpaper that can be used.
- Automatic wallpaper change interval.
- The order and type of arrangement on the desktop.
Where are the Windows 10 desktop wallpapers?
One of the frequently asked questions regarding the functionality of desktop images in Windows 10 is the location of the standard wallpaper folder on the PC. The answer is not very clear, but may be useful for some.
1. Some standard wallpapers, including those used for the lock screen, can be found in the C:\Windows\Web\ folder, in the Wallpaper and Screen subfolders.
2. In the folder C:\ Users\ username\ AppData\ Roaming\ Microsoft\ Windows\ Themes there is a TranscodedWallpaper file, which is the current desktop wallpaper. The file has no extension, but in fact it is a simple jpeg, i.e. You can independently substitute the .jpg extension into the name of this file and open it with any program.
3. If you go to the Windows 10 OS registry editor, then in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Internet Explorer\ Desktop\ General section you can see the WallpaperSource parameter, which specifies the path to the current desktop wallpaper.
4. Wallpapers from themes are located in the folder C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes
Desktop wallpaper quality
One of the common complaints of PC users is the poor quality of wallpapers. The reasons for this may be:
- The resolution of the wallpaper and the screen do not match. Those. if the monitor resolution is 1920x1080, then you need to use wallpaper of the same resolution, without using the options in the wallpaper settings “Stretch”, “Fill”, “Expand”, “Fit”.
- Windows 10 OS re-encodes wallpapers that were in good quality, compressing them into Jpegs in its own way, which leads to deterioration in quality.
To prevent the wallpaper from losing quality when installed in Windows 10 (or losing it only slightly), you can change one of the registry settings that determines the jpeg compression parameters.
1. Go to the registry editor (Win+R, enter regedit) and go to the section HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\ Desktop
2. Right-click on the right side of the registry editor and create a new DWORD value named JPEGImportQuality
3. 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 the registry editor, restart the computer or restart Explorer and reinstall the wallpaper on your desktop to display it in good quality.
GD Star Rating
a WordPress rating system
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.
