Where are the desktop wallpapers located in Windows 11?
When Windows 10 was released, Microsoft shipped it with a modern home screen background. With Windows 11, the company took it to a level further with multiple abstract wallpapers.
Microsoft also packed 6 themes in the operating system, including some really cool dark themes.
Where are the desktop wallpapers located in Windows 11?
The folder is sort of hidden, it is not located in the Pictures folder like common sense would have you believe. Instead, you can find the Windows 11 wallpapers in the following directory: C:\Windows\Web\
Tip: Windows 10 users can find the wallpapers in the same folder, read about it here.
You can read about the Bloom design on Microsoft's blog.
How to find the default wallpapers in Windows 11
- Open File Explorer.
- Navigate to the following folder: C:\Windows\Web\
- It has 4 sub directories: 4K, Screen, touchkeyboard, and Wallpaper. Navigate to each folder to find the ones that you may like.
Each sub-folder in this directory, contains a few pictures in various sizes and resolutions. The primary wallpaper, which is called Bloom (it was inspired by flowers), and its dark mode variant are placed in the following folder: C:\Windows\Web\4K\Wallpaper\Windows
The Screen folder has 6 wallpapers, though one of these is just a solid color background. The Touch Keyboard directory is home to even more colorful abstract backdrops. The C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper is sort of a mixed bag and contains several images, some of which are Nature-themed ones, if that tickles your fancy. There are a couple of image sets with different colored versions of the same wallpaper, you can set the operating system to switch between them by enabling the slideshow option. But I should warn you, toggling the setting can have an adverse result in that it can cause screen flickering issues.
Tip: If you have a laptop or an OEM desktop that included Windows 10 or 11, the manufacturer's default wallpaper can be found in the C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper directory.
Spotlight does not save images that are downloaded from the internet in the Windows wallpapers folder. If you're interested in those, here's what you need to do.
How to find the Spotlight wallpapers in Windows 11
- Open File Explorer.
- Copy the following path and paste it in the file manager's address bar: C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets
- You should see a bunch of files in this folder with random alphanumeric names. Some of them may display a thumbnail preview, but most of them will not. These are the wallpapers that Windows Spotlight downloads occasionally.
- Copy the files to a different folder on your computer.
- The files won't be in a usable state, i.e. you won't be able to open them in Windows Photo Viewer or other apps. There is a simple fix for this issue.
- Rename the files by adding the .jpg suffix to the names. e.g. This will mark them as images, that you can view in any program of your choice.
Note: Windows also saves the icons for apps downloaded from the Microsoft Store in the Content Delivery Manager's folder, so may have to discard those images.
What is the big deal about the Windows 11 wallpapers folder? Why is this important?
Windows 11 only lists the 5 recent backgrounds that you used in the Settings > Personalization screen. So, if you changed wallpapers several times, the Settings app will not display the default backgrounds of the operating system. You will need to browse for them manually, and the folder is not exactly easy to find if you didn't already know about it. That being said, there is a simple way to restore the default backgrounds. All you have to do is to change the theme, and you will get its corresponding image set as your desktop background.
As I mentioned earlier, Windows 11 comes with 6 themes, each of which has its own wallpaper. But keep in mind that there are more backdrops available in the wallpapers folders, so you actually get some extra customization options. By manually changing the wallpaper, you can mix and match the images (including the hidden ones), with the built-in themes of your choice, to keep things fresh.
Having access to the official wallpapers has a few advantages. Let's say that Microsoft decided to remove the wallpapers and replace them with new ones, or edits the current version. You can simply revert to the original backgrounds quite easily. If you have some skill with image editors, you could modify the wallpapers to suit your needs and spruce up your desktop. You may even use the backdrops on your other devices.
If you don't have Windows 11 on your computer but want the wallpapers from it, head over to our previous coverage to download them. Do you like Bing Wallpapers? You can have your desktop wallpaper refreshed every day with the official Bing Wallpapers app from Microsoft, or the third-party program, Bingsnap. If you have an Android phone, you can use a combination of the Muzei Live Wallpaper app, and the Bing Image of the Day add-on, to get a new home screen image every day.
Do you like Windows 11's wallpapers? Which one is your favorite?
“Rename the files by adding the .jpg suffix to the names. e.g. This will mark them as images, that you can view in any program of your choice.”
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets
Batch rename/add the .png extension:
“If you need to append file extension to all files in a folder, just open an elevated Command Prompt. Use the cd command to navigate to the target folder. To add an extension to all files at once, run this command. Replace .jpg with your desired file extension.
ren * *.png”
Probably best to copy all the files from Assets to a new folder on the desktop; then, right click on the folder and, with hope, you have tweaked the context menu to show a “cmd as admin.” Then enter the command.
If not, open cmd as admin and cd to the folder on the desktop.
Don’t run the command on the wrong folder! Probably a major mess.
Or just get something like SpotBright.
I can’t understand why Microsoft is unable to add the daily Bing themes to the W11 wallpapers. Really strange.
This wasn’t helpful at all
I was looking for screensavers for windows 11 and saved a few, like dragons, mushrooms, but when I try to find the saved image collection, it is no where to be found.
I am not to knowledgeable about computers and haven’t understood what in heck is being described regarding how to find these saved images.
As noted in the headline this article regards the location of Windows 11 (static) desktop wallpaper files. Screensavers are not the same thing as desktop wallpapers—for example the very idea with any screensaver is that the image shouldn’t be static but changing, sort of like a movie—hence Windows treat them differently.
Ironically, the 4K folder contains wallpapers that are size 1920×1200 for me, even though I have a 4K display. So not even true 4K wallpapers…
Nice info, thanks! :]
@Ashwin:
Tip:
Save screenshots in .png format.
Then you won’t have these ugly jpeg compression artefacts. ;)
Screenshot of first image @ 500%:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/6ot7ucppamm6jl7/screenshot_20211103.png
Windows saves wallpaper at 85% by default, there’s a simple registry tweak to remove that compression.
This is for Win 10, not sure if 11 is the same. Go to, using regedit:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Create a new 32bit DWORD named JpegImportQuality and give it a value of 100. Log out, log back in and changes will be applied.
The value can be lower or higher than 85. Going lower can be useful to blur the background making desktop shortcuts and icons more prominent.
If you use desktop slide shows, a reduction in image size can be useful.
Side-note : find a .bmp file (file0) then,
1- Convert file0 it to .png -> file1
2- Convert file0 it to .jpg/jpeg -> file2
3- Convert file2 to .png -> file3
You’ll notice that file1’s size is extraordinarily smaller than that of file3
So, if you wish to convert a file to the .png format, choose the .bmp source rather than any other compressed format :=)
@Tom Hawack; November 3, 2021 at 12:53 pm
My – rather rudimentary – screenshot tool can only save as .png. ;)
But the quality is excellent.
File size is not a problem for me. We don’t live in 1998 any more. ;)
For use on blogs like this however, .webp is preferred (good compression and little quality loss).
Conversion to .webp can be done with ‘cwebp’.
https://www.systutorials.com/docs/linux/man/1-cwebp/