Windows 10 default background images

Just wondering if anyone has come across standard background images being updated in Windows 10 to include something a little disturbing (see below, second tile along).

First came across this on my daughter’s laptop a few weeks ago, she started it up one morning and the desktop had been set to this.

A hack? Not sure. I’ve come across it twice since then including earlier today when trying to set up a new laptop.

Any suggestions as to how to resolve this?

Replies (3) 

Hi, my name is Jose. I’m an independent advisor and a Windows user like you. I’m glad to assist you.

By default, all Windows wallpaper are saved to c:\windows\web\wallpaper

You can look for that file. You can see additional information after right click then and select details tab. This tab will show you when the file was saved.

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I’ve checked the wallpaper folder as you suggested, dodgy file is not there, nor is it anywhere I can see.

Anything else I can do to find and eliminate this offensive pic?

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It can be stored anywhere.

We can use the Regedit tool. You must be careful not to delete anything.

Use the search box to locate the regedit application and run it.

Press the F3 key to perform a search. Type the following expression: BackgroundHistoryPath1

The result will show you the path of each of the images that appears in the example that you attached.

Check every path until the image file is located.

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How to Get the Old Windows 10 Default Wallpaper Back

In May of this year, Microsoft introduced the Windows light theme in a Windows update. The introduction of this new theme also introduced a new, lighter, default Windows 10 wallpaper.

Unfortunately this update also completely removed the original, darker, background that many of us have become accustomed to. Luckily someone uploaded a 4k version of this wallpaper to Imgur and we’re here to show you how to restore it.

You can also download this wallpaper in various resolutions thanks to a user over at the Windows 10 Forums. If you’re unsure of which resolution to use, just use the 4k version at the Imgur link above.

At a Glance

1. Click this Imgur link
2. Right click anywhere on the image and click Save image as. and save it to your Desktop
3. Find the image on your desktop, right click it and choose `Set as desktop background`

Video: How to Restore the Old Windows 10 Default Wallpaper

How to Restore the Old Windows 10 Default Wallpaper

Step 1: Open this Imgur link and save the image to your desktop.

Step 2: Go back to your desktop and find the image you just saved. Right click it and choose Set as desktop background .

Your desktop wallpaper should now be back to the original Windows 10 wallpaper.

Windows 10 Wallpapers Location

Another option you may have, if you have access to another Windows 10 computer that has not yet received the update, is to pull the original image from that computer’s windows wallpaper directory.

You can do this by navigating to the C:\Windows\Web\4K\Wallpaper\Windows directory on the older Windows 10 version PC and copying over the img0_3840x2160.jpg file to the updated computer. I’d recommend using something like Dropbox to do this but you could just as easily use a USB stick.

Once you have the original file copied over to the computer with the update, simply right click and set it as your desktop background like shown in this tutorial with the copy from Imgur.

A user over at the Windows 10 Forums retrieved these images and uploaded them for others to use. You can download these instead of copying them over from an older computer.

On the topic of frustrating changes Microsoft has made this year, have you suddenly started seeing a program called Microsoft Teams startup when you turn on your computer? If so, and you find that it annoys you, we have an article on how to uninstall it or simply remove it from the startup processes.

How to change default window background color in Windows 10?

In Windows 7 and Windows XP it was very easy to change the default background color of all windows to whatever you want. Staring at white window backgrounds all day is hard on the eyes. Once changed, ALL windows of all apps would conform to the custom color as long as the apps allowed the windows bg to be invoked. So for example it worked great in Notepad and many other apps.

Then the geniuses at M$ decided that this feature was no longer needed in Windows 8, and removed it. There were some reg hacks, but nothing standard. I remember reading that the feature would be coming back in Windows 10, but I’m not finding this to be the case. The only [partial/broken] way I have found to be able to do this is to tweak the following registry keys:

When I changed those keys to my chosen soothing color and rebooted, it worked ONE TIME. After every reboot thereafter, all the white backgrounds are back AND YET those registry keys still have my custom RGB codes. I really hate Microsoft right now, but that aside, is there any solid way to change windows 10 bg colors and make it stick?

Important: In Settings -> Personalization -> Colors, none of that changes windows backgrounds. Already tried.

I am using Windows 10 Enterprise Version 1511 Build 10586.3.

UPDATE: I rebooted again and the bg colors work correctly. but later in the day all the window bgcolors were back to white again. Windows 8.1 had the exact same bug. My conclusion is that the reg hack «works» but only intermittently. Is this simply a MS bug? Or is there a better answer/solution?

The location of Windows 10 wallpapers for the Desktop and the Lock Screen

Windows 10 uses impressive pictures for the desktop background and for the Lock Screen. Some of them look great, and we especially like the new default wallpaper for Windows 10 May 2019 Update. If you want to know the location of those images, so that you can use them as wallpapers for other PCs and devices, read this article:

Where to see the background pictures used by Windows 10

Windows 10 uses a set of wallpapers that are found on every PC or device where it is installed. When you open the Settings app, go to Personalization.

When you select Background on the left, the right side of the window lets you see the pictures used as desktop wallpapers for Windows 10, in the area highlighted below.

Click or tap on Lock Screen in the column on the left, and on the right side of the Settings window, you see the pictures used by Windows 10 for the Lock Screen.

Next, let’s see how to find all these wallpapers on the disk.

The location of the wallpapers used by Windows 10 for the desktop

The location for Windows 10 desktop wallpapers is “C:WindowsWeb”. Open File Explorer, go to the C: drive, double-click on Windows and then on Web. There you find several subfolders: 4K, Screen, and Wallpaper.

If you open the 4K folder and all its subfolders, you find the wallpaper with the Windows logo, at different resolutions, and aspect ratios. This is the wallpaper used by default for Windows 10 May 2019 Update or newer.

When you open the Wallpaper subfolder, you find other folders:

• Flowers – it contains the standard Windows 10 wallpapers with flowers. There are six of them, all in Full HD resolution or higher.
• Windows – it contains the standard wallpaper with the Windows 10 logo.
• Windows 10 – it has five wallpapers at different resolutions, featuring nature scenes.

If you have purchased your Windows 10 PC, laptop or device from a manufacturer like HP, Dell, Lenovo, and so on, you may also find a folder created by the manufacturer, with their own default wallpapers. For example, our laptop has an HP Backgrounds folder with a wallpaper created by HP.

The location of the wallpapers used by Windows 10 for the Lock Screen

Windows 10’s Lock Screen wallpaper location is “C:WindowsWebScreen.” There you find six wallpapers, all in Full HD resolution or higher.

Which Windows 10 wallpapers do you like best?

Navigate through all the wallpapers that are bundled with Windows 10, and tell us which you like best. What do you think about the new wallpaper from Windows 10 May 2019 Update? We like it a lot more than previous versions, as it looks more optimistic and modern. Comment below and let’s discuss.

Path to current desktop backgrounds in Windows 10?

There is another question on here that allows users to find the path to their current background image through a cmd command.

In Windows 10 this no longer works. It only returns the first image in the folder, it does not change with the backgrounds as they transition. I need a similar command that returns the path(s) to the current image on the desktop background(s) that actually works in Windows 10 if one exists.

5 Answers 5

A copy of the current wallpaper can be found by typing the below path in Windows File Explorer address bar.

Path 1 —
%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\CachedFiles

If you don’t find a copy of your current desktop background image here, try below path instead.

Path 2 —
%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper

Note: The file TranscodedWallpaper in Path 2 does not have a file extension. Use «Open With» or «How do you want to open this file?» dialogue box and select any image viewer, such as, «Windows Photo Viewer», «Honeyview» or the «Photos» app.

Note for Windows 10: The above locations have limitations. For example, if the wallpaper you’re looking for is no longer visible in the ‘Background’ tab in the Settings app, you can’t recover it. It will work for your last five wallpapers but nothing older. (Source)

Default Windows wallpapers can be found in

You will see 3 folders

• «4K» for 4K wallpapers,
• «Screen» for lock screen backgrounds, &
• «Wallpapers» for Default Windows wallpapers

Installed themes (Aero, etc):

Per-user installed themes (including pre-installed from OEM):

If you are looking for the location of Lock Screen images — visit this SuperUser question.

Personally, I use John’s Background Switcher to manage my desktop background.

John’s Background Switcher has an option to view the current/previous desktop background (set by the app itself). Follow below steps —

1. Right click on the tray icon and select View Current Picture and the current desktop background opens in Windows Photo Viewer (or your default image viewer).
2. In Windows Photo Viewer, you can right click on the image & select Open File Location to view the original location of current desktop background in windows File Explorer.

To activate Windows Photo Viewer in Windows 10 visit this article on HowToGeek

I have Windows 10, version 1709. One of the other answers got me looking in the registry and I found exactly what I needed in clear text at

No decoding needed.

Windows 8 and 10 still store the original path of the current background image — rather than the cached / transcoded file as in xypha’s answer:

Microsoft doesn’t want things to be easy though: this isn’t plain text so you have to decode it from binary.

The Winhelponline website has compiled a couple of scripts (VBA and PowerShell) which can print the image name, and launch Explorer to point to the image file.

To get the «Transcoded» PATH in cleartext, do this in PowerShell:

You don’t explain exactly what is the FINAL purpose of this, so I can give some tips here based on a guess: you want to change your wallpaper in certain conditions (for example, one wallpaper every time you restart your computer) or to use a custom file as wallpaper.

In Windows 7 the wallpaper was usually found in %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper .
In Windows 10 you will find it in %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\CachedFiles .

You can also interrogate the registry at

but note the warnings below about programs that are NOT writing a file to disk!

If you want to build your own CMD script, this might be unreliable IF you set the wallpaper not from Windows but from an external program. For example, if I see a nice image in my browser, I set it as wallpaper directly from there. Same for IrfanView. I can easily name another 10 popular programs that could change the wallpaper to a custom path.

Note that some programs are changing the wallpaper without actually writing a file to disk. This can be done by hooking to the Microsoft Windows Desktop window and drawing directly on its canvas. This is how GIF/AVI animations are drawn on desktop.

There is another issue if you build your own script: How to you handle images that don’t have same aspect ratio as your desktop, or when desktop resolution changes?

The solution (if I guessed your problem correctly) would be to use a program like John’s Background Switcher or BioniX Desktop Background Changer. The latter is much more customizable and can be controlled via command line. It also has auto-detection to detect the best way to resize the image (fill/fit/tile). BioniX can also draw GIF without writing anything to disk (as explained above).

A even better way would be to use the «Lock on folder» option. Set BioniX to change your wallpaper every 60 seconds (don’t worry, you won’t see a new wallpaper every 60 seconds since you will use only one file). Set BioniX to lock on any folder (let’s say C:\Wallpapers ). Inside that folder you put a single file called something like My Wallpaper.jpg . BioniX will use that file as wallpaper every 60 seconds. Now, every time you want to change the wallpaper you replace the old My Wallpaper.jpg with your new file. BioniX will see the change you have done to the folder and apply the new file (within 60 seconds).

Let us know what you want to achieve with your script to get a better solution.