Where does Windows store its current wallpaper? [duplicate]

I created an image for a desktop wallpaper and set the image directly in Windows (not from a browser). However, the image file I made is no longer on my computer, but the wallpaper is still there. How can I retrieve this wallpaper? It has to load from somewhere.

2 Answers 2

Windows XP (Reference):

You can find the actual path in the registry key named Wallpaper at [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]

Usually it’s something like:

C:\Documents and Settings\ [YOURUSERNAME] \Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Wallpaper1.bmp

Windows 7 (Reference):

C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper (default themes)

C:\Users\ [YOURUSERNAME] \AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes ( any new themes that you might have installed )

C:\Users\ [YOURUSERNAME] \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes ( any other pictures that you might have made as an wallpaper.

The specifics would depend on your Windows version, but going by Windows 7 (which should be reasonably useful in the absence of a specified version, and which I have easy access to):

• right-click on the desktop and pick Personalize
• click Desktop Background
• right-click on the selected image and either:
  • pick Properties and look under General, Location
  • or, pick something under Open With

This should provide you access to the file so that you can copy or save it elsewhere. I would guess that it is stored in a temporary files folder somewhere currently.

Where is the wallpaper folder in Windows 7?

Where is the wallpaper folder in Windows 7?

3 Answers 3

• %SystemRoot%\Web\Wallpaper (default themes)
• %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes ( any new themes that you might have installed )
• %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes ( any other pictures that you might have made as an wallpaper.

On my version of Windows 7 the Desktop Background folders are located in the directory below:

You can create your own folder, add it to the above directory, and then browse to that location to add it to the «Picture Location» dropdown list within the «Choose your desktop background» screen.

While the answer by @Sathya is mostly correct, it can also be located elsewhere, in a location defined in a .theme text file located in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes

For example the well-known image tool Irfanview (1) can directly select the current image as wallpaper, and in that case it will be stored as:

(1) Tested with Irfanview 4.38

Not the answer you’re looking for? Browse other questions tagged windows-7 or ask your own question.

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Where to Find the Windows 10 Wallpaper Location on Your PC [Partition Magic]

By Ariel | Follow | Last Updated March 20, 2020

Summary :

There is a library of wallpaper images for Windows 10 users to put on the desktop. Some of them still don’t know where to find the Windows 10 wallpaper location. Don’t worry. MiniTool will walk you through detailed steps to find the Windows 10 default wallpaper.

Quick Navigation :

As you might know, every version of Windows comes with many default wallpaper images for users. You can set these images as your background for your desktop. Although there are a variety of wallpapers that you can download from websites, still many people want to use the Windows 10 wallpaper.

Where to find Windows 10 wallpaper location? A great many people are searching for this instruction online. Now, let’s see the following guides. You can choose a method that’s suitable for you.

A great many users are searching for the guide to change taskbar color Windows 10. Now, you can read this post in which the detailed steps are provided.

Method 1. Find Windows 10 Wallpaper Location in the Default Directory

If you want to use the Windows 10 default wallpaper as a background on an older version of Windows or on another computer, you need to find the actual location of these files. Windows 10 usually stores the background picture in the C:\Windows\Web folder by default. Here is a quick guide for you.

Step 1. Press the Win + E keys to open the File Explorer window.

Step 2. Navigate to the C:\Windows\Web location path and then you will find the Windows wallpaper location inside the Web folder.

Alternatively, you can find the Windows 10 default wallpaper by typing C:\Windows\Web in the search bar and hit Enter.

What is the user folder on Windows 10? How to move the user folder to another drive? In this post, we will walk you through detailed steps to move user folders.

Method 2. Find Windows 10 Wallpaper Location in Your Themes Folder

Some Windows 10 users want to use the Windows 10 Themes instead of the standard background pictures. Then you can find the Windows background picture location in the Themes folder.

Microsoft often releases the Windows 10 theme pictures via the Microsoft Store. These themes include your favorite game, outdoor views, etc. The themes that you downloaded are located in the local user directory if you haven’t changed it.

To find the Windows 10 themes location, please the steps below:

Step 1. Press the Win + E keys to open the File Explorer window.

Step 2. Type the %localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes text in the search bar and hit Enter. After a moment, the themes files or folder will be shown in the subdirectory and you can open the folders to find your desired themes.

Method 3. Find Current Windows 10 Wallpaper Location via Registry Editor

In addition to the above 2 methods, you can find the current Windows 10 wallpaper location via Registry Editor. Here’s how to do that:

Step 1. Press the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box, and then type regedit in the box and hit Enter.

Step 2. In the Registry Editor window, navigate to the following path from the left sidebar.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Step 3. Find the value name Wallpaper and TranscodedImageCache from the right pane. Double click the 2 value key file, and then you will find the file path of your Windows wallpaper location and copy the Value data.

Step 4. Open your File Explorer, and then paste the location path that you copied in the search bar and hit Enter.

Now, you should find the current Windows background picture location via the Registry Editor.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Position: Columnist

Ariel is an enthusiastic IT columnist focusing on partition management, data recovery, and Windows issues. She has helped users troubleshot various problems like PS4 corrupted disk, unexpected store exception error, the green screen of death error, etc. If you are searching for methods to optimize your storage device and restore lost data from different storage devices, then Ariel can provide reliable solutions for these issues.

How to Find Current Wallpaper (Desktop Background) File Location in Windows 7

Desktop Background Slideshow is a neat little feature in Windows 7 which helps you shuffle your desktop background from a image file store folder, at predefined intervals. But, as Windows doesn’t show the file name of the currently displayed wallpaper, it becomes a problem if you have thousands of images in a store folder and you need to find the file name and the directory location of the currently displayed wallpaper.

Here is a small script which adds the Desktop Background File Location option in the Desktop context menu, which opens the current wallpaper file’s target folder and selects the file.

Note: This script doesn’t work in Windows 8 or 10. If you’re using Windows 8/8.1 or Windows 10, see article How to Determine the Current Wallpaper File Name and Path in Windows 8 and 10.

1. Download WPTargetDir.zip, unzip and extract the contents to a folder.

2. Move the file WPTargetDir.vbs to the Windows directory.

3. Double-click Add.reg to add the context menu option.

4. Hold the SHIFT key down and right-click on an empty area in the Desktop. You’ll see the Desktop Background File Location option.

Selecting this option gets the current wallpaper file name from the registry, opens the target folder and selects the image file.

To remove/uninstall this option, run the file undo.reg, and then manually delete WPTargetDir.vbs manually from the Windows folder.

More Information

The script queries the wallpaper source file name from the following registry key:

The information is stored in a string value named WallpaperSource

One small request: If you liked this post, please share this?

About the author

Ramesh Srinivasan founded Winhelponline.com back in 2005. He is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for 10 consecutive years from 2003 to 2012.

Microsoft → Windows → Windows 7 → How to Find Current Wallpaper (Desktop Background) File Location in Windows 7

36 thoughts on “How to Find Current Wallpaper (Desktop Background) File Location in Windows 7”

This particular tweak is incredibly useful. Thanks Ramesh your blog is very helpful. I love your reg/scripted tweaks.

Thanks for sharing this great tweak.

Great script – just what I was looking for!

There was a problem with the folder “天使的眼淚 – 嘉” from W7 personalization gallery though. Guess it’s the foreign characters.

Thank you for this script 🙂 It came in very handy.

Where are Windows 10 Default Wallpapers Stored

The desktop backgrounds which come with Windows 10 are really lovely. Many users like these wallpapers much. I have been asked by readers where they are stored on the disk drive. If you are interested in finding them and want to use them somewhere else like in your dual boot operating system like Linux or Windows 7, here is how to find them.

Traditionally, wallpapers in Windows were stored in the folder C:\Windows\Web\Wallpapers. To find Windows 10 Default Wallpapers, open File Explorer by pressing Win + E on the keyboard. Type or copy-paste the following path in its address bar:

There you will find 3 subfolders which contain all the default desktop backgrounds available in Windows 10.

The 4K folder contains different sizes of the default wallpaper known as the «Windows Hero» image. These images are used with different screen orientations on supported devices. It is also available in 4K resolution (3840 x 2160).

The Screen folder includes default images used for the Lock Screen background.

Note: When the Spotlight feature is enabled, Windows 10 downloads gorgeous Lock Screen wallpapers from the Internet automatically. The OS stores them at a different location. To learn more, please refer to the following article: Where to find Lockscreen Spotlight images in Windows 10?

The last folder, Wallpaper, contains the default Desktop backgrounds. They are arranged in three folders:

The Flowers folder stores images for the built-in «Flowers» theme.

The Windows folder comes with only one stock background image.

Windows 10 — this folder contains the default backgrounds visible in the Settings app out of the box.

If you are interested, you can download the entire collection of the Windows 10 default wallpapers here:

You might be curious why the folder has the name «Web» in its path, when the images are not related to the web. That’s because of the «Active Desktop» feature in early Windows versions. Windows 95 had no ability to use a *.JPG image as the Desktop background. Later, when Microsoft released Internet Explorer 4, it brought the feature called «Active Desktop». Its key feature was the ability to display your favorite web content right on the Desktop. It also extended Explorer with the ability to show folders as web pages. JPEG images could also be used as the Desktop background. So, starting with Windows 98, Windows keeps all images in the Windows\Web\Wallpapers subfolder.

Modern Windows versions have no support for Active Desktop or for the web view in File Explorer, however, the folder structure remains intact even today. Windows 10 has mostly the same folder structure for wallpapers and allows you to adjust the wallpaper image quality.

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About Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer from Russia who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.