How to Change Lock Screen Background to Windows Spotlight, Picture, or Slideshow in Windows 10


The lock screen is the screen you see at startup and when you lock the PC. You will need to dismiss the lock screen to be able to see the sign in screen and sign in to Windows.

Your lock screen will display detailed and quick status of apps you choose. You can use Windows Spotlight, a single picture, or a slideshow of images from added folders as your lock screen background.

The default lock screen is the one that displays at startup when secure sign-in with Ctrl+Alt+Delete is enabled.

The user lock screen is the one that you select the background image for your account in Settings, displays the last user lock screen at startup when secure sign-in with Ctrl+Alt+Delete is disabled, when a user locks the PC while signed in to Windows 10, and after the one minute idle timeout period when a user signs out of Windows 10.

This tutorial will show you how to change your user lock screen background to use Windows spotlight, a picture, or slideshow of pictures for your user account in Windows 10.

If you have enabled secure sign-in where users are required to press CTRL+ALT+DEL to unlock, then the lock screen at startup will only show the default picture, and would cause the slide show to not play on the lock screen for all users.

If you turn on Show lock screen background picture on the sign-in screen, then you will need to make sure that you have Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing checked in your visual effects settings to prevent the lock screen background not displaying properly.

Previously on PC, there were two separate backgrounds for the Lock screen and then the Sign-in screen. Starting in Windows 10 build 14279, Microsoft is merging the experience so there is just a single background – your Lock screen background. This is similar to the behavior seen on mobile. If you have a custom Lock screen background set, you will see your Lock screen background is now used for both the Lock screen and Sign-in screen by default.

The default lock screen background images included in Windows are located in the C:\Windows\Web\Screen folder.

If you like, you can get free desktop backgrounds from Microsoft at the link below to use for your lock screen background.

Desktop backgrounds - Microsoft Windows

You will need to activate Windows before you can personalize your PC.

Contents

• Option One: Change your Lock Screen Background Image to Windows Spotlight, Picture, or Slideshow in Settings
• Option Two: Change your Lock Screen Background Image to Picture using Photos app

EXAMPLE: Lock screen in Windows 10

OPTION ONE

Change your Lock Screen Background Image to Windows Spotlight, Picture, or Slideshow in Settings

1 Open Settings, and click/tap on the Personalization icon.

2 Do step 3 (Windows spotlight), step 4 (picture), or step 5 (slideshow) below for what you want as your lock screen background.

3 To Use Windows Spotlight as your Lock Screen Background

Starting in Windows 10 build 10547, Windows spotlight is available in all editions.

Windows spotlight is a feature that provides a service driven personalized stream of information on your lock screen for you.

For example, Windows spotlight will display different backgrounds from Bing that you can select that you like or don't like to help train the service to show you images you like. You could also see and try previews of other Windows features and experiences to help let you know about them.

The images for Windows Spotlight are stored in the folder below.

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

The images will look like this below. Copy them to your desktop, and rename them to whatever.jpg to see the images.

See: How to Find and Save Windows Spotlight Background Images in Windows 10

A) Click/tap on Lock screen on the left side, select Windows spotlight in the drop down menu under Background, and go to step 6 below. (see screenshot below)

4 To Use a Picture as your Lock Screen Background

This option is to select a single image to be your lock screen background.

A) Click/tap on Lock screen on the left side, select Picture in the drop down menu under Background. (see screenshot below)

B) Turn on or off Get fun facts, tips, and more from Windows and Cortana on your lock screen (Windows mini-spotlight). (see screenshot below)

C) If you like, you can choose one of the five showing recent or default pictures. (see screenshot below)

D) If you like, you can click/tap on Browse (see screenshot above), then navigate to, select, and choose picture. (see screenshot below)

E) When finished, go to step 6 below.

5 To Use a Slideshow as your Lock Screen Background

This option is to have a slideshow as your lock screen background that plays images from inside the folders you choose to add.

The Windows Search service must be running and set to Automatic for the lock screen slideshow to work.

A) Click/tap on Lock screen on the left side, select Slideshow in the drop down menu under Background. (see screenshot below)

B) Turn on or off Get fun facts, tips, and more from Windows and Cortana on your lock screen (Windows mini-spotlight). (see screenshot below)

C) If you would like to add a folder that contains images you want to use for your slideshow, click/tap on Add a folder, navigate to and select a folder (ex: OneDrive Pictures), then click/tap on Choose this folder. (see screenshots below)

D) If you would like to remove and added folder, click/tap on a folder (OneDrive Pictures), and click/tap on Remove. (see screenshot below)

E) Click/tap on the Advanced slideshow settings link. (see screenshot below step 5A)

F) Turn on or off the settings you like, select when to turn off screen after slide show has played for (SlideshowDuration), and go to step 6 below. (see screenshot below)

These are the default settings in the screenshot below.

The turn off screen after slide show has played for setting is stored as seconds (decimal) for the DWORD value in the registry key below.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lock Screen

SlideshowDuration DWORD

1800000 (decimal) = 30 minutes
3600000 (decimal) = 1 hour
10800000 (decimal) = 3 hours
0 (decimal) = Don't turn off

6 When finished, you can close Settings if you like.

OPTION TWO

Change your Lock Screen Background Image to Picture using Photos app

1 Open an image that you want as your lock screen with the Photos app.

2 Press the Ctrl + L keys.

OR
3 Click/tap on the More button at the top right corner, click/tap on Set as, and click/tap on Set as lock screen. (see screenshot below)

That's it,
Shawn Brink

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