Figure C How will Windows crop this portrait image for the lock screen background? Editing your photos As you can imagine, in its current format, it is hard to tell for sure how Windows would crop this image for the lock screen background. For example, the picture I’m using for this article, shown in Figure C, is one I took with my iPhone in portrait mode. Once you have the Photos app up and running, open your image. Figure B Launching the Photos app from Search is quick and easy. The Photos app will then appear in the results panel, as shown in Figure B. You can launch the Photos app by clicking the Start button and typing Photos in the search box. Instead, you can take charge of the entire process by editing your photos and setting them as the lock screen background from within Windows 10’s Photos app. Figure A You can use your own pictures for the lock screen background.įortunately, you don’t have to rely on the default settings on the Lock Screen tab to set your background. Most often folks complain that when they set their own pictures as the lock screen background from the Lock Screen tab, as shown in Figure A, Windows crops out the main focus of their photo. One question that has popped up quite frequently refers to the way Windows automatically crops user photos that are set as the lock screen background on a wide screen monitor. Since that time, I’ve received all kinds of feedback and questions about using images as the lock screen background. I then presented my Spotlight Image Finder script and showed you how to use it to find those images. In an August 2016 article titled Grab spectacular images from the Windows Spotlight lock screen with this handy script, I told you that the stunning photographs that appear on the lock screen when you select Windows Spotlight images for your lock screen background are automatically downloaded from Microsoft Bing and saved on your hard disk in an obscurely named file and folder structure. Windows 10 and 11 in S Mode: What Is It, and Should You Use It?ġ0 Best Project Management Software for Windows in 2023 How to Download and Install the Windows 11 23H2 Update In both procedures, one ends up on the Lock Screen settings page, but choice made through the HeatherS1969 approach actually changes the BOOT screen wallpaper.A handy feature hidden in the Windows 10 Photos app lets you tailor your lock screen images to look the way you want. I use Classic Shell, so I'm not sure if the steps are the same for people who use the default Win 10 (Metro?) setup. Start -> click on account picture -> change account settings -> Sign-in options -> Related settings / Lock screen -> Lock Screen to replace the background picture Settings -> Personalization -> Lock Screen to replace the background picture So, I carefully repeated the steps as instructed, and it fixed the issue. Because the last step ended on the Lock Screen settings page, I thought at first that the HeatherS1969 approach simply used a different starting point but was ultimately the same, but the follow-up by MichelleBryant-Thomas in the thread suggested that it worked. Almost all of the solutions offered were about the same procedure mentioned above until I came across that of HeatherS1969. When I began looking for a solution on-line, I discovered my case was happening to others, too. I thought the picture or setting was stuck or it was a bug unique to my system/setup.
I repeated the Settings procedure many times, but it did not produce the result I wanted. If I shutdown the system and cold-booted, the default Win 10 landscape wallpaper came up again on (what I call) the BOOT screen. From this point on until shutdown, if the system got locked manually or timed out, the new custom wallpaper was shown on the LOCK and LOGON screens all the time. If I touched the mouse or keyboard, the LOGON screen popped up with the new custom wallpaper.
Then, every time I cold-booted, the system began showing the default Win 10 landscape wallpaper again. The new custom wallpaper was shown on both LOCK and LOGON screens. I manually locked my system to test it, no problem. I used Settings -> Personalization -> Lock Screen to replace the wallpaper using my own picture collection and set the same wallpaper for log-in (LOGON) screen. My system had been showing the default Win 10 landscape wallpapers in all screens.