Set Windows Spotlight Images as Your Wallpaper (11/10)
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To set a Windows Spotlight lock screen picture as your desktop wallpaper on Windows 11 or 10, copy the file out of a hidden folder Windows already keeps on your PC, give the copy a .jpg ending, then right-click it and choose Set as desktop background. Here's the part almost every guide gets backward: you do not need to unhide anything first. Paste the exact folder path straight into the File Explorer address bar and it drops you into that hidden folder, checkbox untouched, every single time.
Jake runs a mobile phone shop, and lately every laptop he sets up gets the same request: "can you make it look like that photo that was on the lock screen yesterday?" For months he just told customers he'd "see what he could do," then quietly lost ten minutes per machine hunting for a picture that, as far as Windows was concerned, wasn't officially stored anywhere he could point to.
That photo is Windows Spotlight — the rotating set of lock screen images Windows downloads and cycles through on its own. It is a lock screen feature, not a wallpaper feature, and it doesn't hand you a copy of the picture anywhere obvious. The good news: the file is sitting on the hard drive the whole time. You just have to know where to look, and what to do once you find it.
What Windows Spotlight actually is
Windows Spotlight is the feature behind your lock screen — the screen you see before you sign in. Windows downloads a handful of curated photos ahead of time and rotates through them on a schedule, mostly landscapes and professional photography. It is a separate setting from your desktop background, and turning one into the other isn't automatic — that's the whole reason this guide exists.
Because it's a lock screen feature first, the files it downloads live in a cache folder meant for Windows itself to read, not for you to browse casually. That's why the file names look like gibberish and carry no .jpg or .png on the end — Windows knows what they are; your photo viewer doesn't, until you tell it.
🙋♂️ Jake's Reality Check
"If I don't grab the file today, will it still be there tomorrow when I get back to it?"
Don't count on it. That folder is a small rolling cache, not a photo library — Windows clears old files out to make room for new ones. If you like it, copy it out the same day.
Windows 11: step by step
Getting to the folder without unhiding anything
Most guides tell you to turn on "Show hidden items" first, then click your way down through AppData, Local, Packages, and a folder with an intimidating long name. Skip all of it. Open File Explorer, click once in the address bar, and paste this exact path, then press Enter:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets
File Explorer takes you straight there. Typing or pasting a full path navigates directly to it regardless of whether hidden items are currently shown on screen — the visibility toggle only affects what you see while clicking through folders one at a time, not where a typed path is allowed to go.
Picking the right file
You'll land on a list of files with long, meaningless names and no file extension. Some are wide, high-resolution lock-screen photography — the ones you want. A few others are small, narrow, or oddly cropped: those are promotional tiles Spotlight occasionally shows, not wallpaper candidates. Turn on the preview pane from the View menu if you want a thumbnail before opening anything, or just click through them one at a time; nothing you do here changes or deletes the originals.
1. Copy the file you want (don't cut it, don't rename it in place).
2. Paste the copy somewhere of your own — your Pictures folder is fine.
3. Rename the copy so it ends in .jpg. Windows will warn you that changing a file extension might make it unusable; that warning is generic and doesn't apply here, since the underlying data is a normal JPEG already. Confirm.
4. Right-click the renamed file and choose Set as desktop background.
⚠️ What this actually breaks
Renaming or moving the file inside the Assets folder itself, instead of working on a copy elsewhere, can confuse Windows into re-downloading it or skipping it during the next rotation. Always copy first, and do everything else to the copy.
The Windows 11 right-click trap
Windows 11's right-click menu is shorter than Windows 10's by default — a handful of everyday commands got condensed to save space, and the rest were moved under a Show more options entry near the bottom of the menu (or you can jump straight there with Shift + F10 instead of a plain right-click). If "Set as desktop background" isn't sitting in the short menu on your build, that's where to look before assuming something's broken.
Windows 10: the same steps, same folder
These steps are the same on both operating systems — the storage path hasn't moved. Open File Explorer, paste the same path into the address bar, copy the file, rename the copy to end in .jpg, right-click it, and choose Set as desktop background. The only real difference is that Windows 10's right-click menu isn't condensed the way Windows 11's is, so you won't need to hunt for a "Show more options" entry — everything is on the first menu.
🕐 What changed since we first wrote this
- Then: our 2016 guide already pointed at this same Assets folder — that part of Windows hasn't moved in a decade.
- Now: Windows 10 itself has changed status. Free security updates for Windows 10 22H2 ended October 14, 2025. It still boots, still runs, still lets you do everything in this guide — none of that is affected.
- What that means for you: if you're staying on Windows 10 a while longer, look at Extended Security Updates below before you do anything else with the machine.
If you want to keep receiving security updates on Windows 10 past that date, Microsoft's consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program covers you: enroll from Settings > Windows Update > Enroll now, which requires your PC to be on version 22H2 and signed in with a Microsoft account rather than a local one. One enrolled Microsoft account covers up to ten devices. Enrollment is free if you sync your settings through Windows Backup, or costs 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, or a one-time roughly $30 payment — pricing varies by region, and it's still open to sign up for as of this writing. Coverage originally ran one year; Microsoft has since extended consumer ESU an extra year, through October 2027, for devices already enrolled. None of that changes anything about Windows Spotlight itself — it's just the honest context for anyone weighing whether to stay on Windows 10 a while longer or move to Windows 11 now, which is also where Jake's shop tends to come up: trade-in value on an older machine usually covers more of a new one than people expect.
When it doesn't work — symptom by symptom
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Assets folder is empty | Lock screen isn't set to Spotlight | Turn on Spotlight under Lock screen settings, then lock and unlock once |
| Yesterday's picture is gone | Cache rotated it out | None — copy new favorites the same day from now on |
| "Set as desktop background" missing | Condensed right-click menu (Windows 11) | Click "Show more options" or press Shift + F10 |
| Picture opens as a broken/unknown file | Copy still has no extension | Rename the copy so it ends in .jpg |
The Assets folder is empty, or has almost nothing in it. Windows only downloads Spotlight images once the lock screen background is actually set to use it. If your lock screen is set to a plain picture or a slideshow instead, nothing gets downloaded to that folder. Go to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen, set it to Windows Spotlight, then lock the PC (Win + L) and unlock it. A fresh image usually appears within moments on an active connection.
You can't find the picture from a few days ago. This folder is a small rolling cache, not an archive — old files get cleared to make room for new downloads. There's nothing to restore it from once it's gone; the only real fix is copying favorites out the same day you see them, going forward.
The file won't open, or opens as garbage. Almost always means the copy still has no file extension, or got renamed to something other than .jpg by mistake. Check the file name ends exactly in .jpg with nothing extra after it.
Keeping your favorites for good
Because the Assets folder never holds more than a handful of recent files, the only real strategy is building your own collection as you go. Ethan's advice to anyone who asks is blunt: "The day you see one you like, copy it out. Don't plan to come back for it — the folder doesn't care what you meant to do."
A folder called something like "Spotlight Favorites" inside your Pictures library works fine. Whenever a lock screen catches your eye, open the Assets path, sort by Date modified to find the newest file fast, copy it, rename it with a short description and a .jpg ending, and drop it in. A few months of this habit and you'll have your own small gallery to choose a wallpaper from, instead of hoping the one you liked is still sitting in the cache.
✅ Why this is the one to use
Copying to your own folder beats leaving photos in the Assets cache for one simple reason: Windows manages that cache for its own purposes, and it will delete from it without asking. Your Pictures folder won't.
The task you'll want next: setting it back as your lock screen
Once you've saved a favorite as a wallpaper, the next question people ask is usually the reverse: can the same picture go back onto the lock screen, on purpose, without Spotlight ever rotating it away again? Yes — go to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen, change the background type to Picture instead of Spotlight, and browse to the same saved file. That locks your lock screen to that one image permanently, the same way setting it as wallpaper locks your desktop to it.
If you're setting up several machines the same way — which is exactly Jake's situation on the workbench — keep your "Spotlight Favorites" folder on a USB drive or in cloud storage instead of only on one PC, so you're not repeating the folder-hunting step on every single machine you touch.
Windows 11 vs Windows 10 — what's actually different here
Less than you'd think. The Assets folder path is byte-for-byte identical on both. The only real differences are around the edges: Windows 11 condenses the right-click menu and tucks less-common commands under "Show more options," while Windows 10 shows everything on one menu. Windows 11 has also been shifting settings that used to live only in Control Panel over into the Settings app — Personalization is one of the areas that made that move — though Control Panel itself hasn't disappeared and some older tools still only exist there.
Fill, Fit, or Span — which one to pick for a Spotlight photo
Right-clicking "Set as desktop background" applies the picture using whichever fit option your Personalization settings are already using — it doesn't ask you to choose at that moment. If the photo looks cropped oddly, zoomed in too far, or has black bars around it afterward, the fix is in Settings > Personalization > Background, in the fit dropdown next to your picture.
| Fit option | What it does | Best for a Spotlight photo when |
|---|---|---|
| Fill | Scales up to cover the whole screen, cropping edges as needed | Your monitor's aspect ratio is close to the photo's — the safe default |
| Fit | Shows the whole photo, adding bars if the ratios don't match | You never want any part of the shot cropped off, even if that means bars |
| Stretch | Forces the photo to fill the screen, distorting it if ratios differ | Rarely — Spotlight photos usually distort noticeably under Stretch |
| Center | Places it at original size in the middle, solid color filling the rest | A small monitor where the photo is already larger than the screen |
| Tile | Repeats the image in a grid at original size | Essentially never, for a single landscape photo |
| Span | Stretches one image across every connected monitor as a single canvas | You run two or more monitors and want one continuous photo, not a repeat on each |
Ethan's default recommendation for Spotlight photos specifically: "Fill, almost every time. These are wide landscape shots to begin with, so Fill crops a sliver off the sides and looks intentional. Stretch is the one to avoid — it's the option that makes a beautiful photo look like it's been smeared."
Third-party Spotlight-saving apps — worth it?
There's a small category of apps and browser extensions built to watch the Assets folder and automatically copy new Spotlight images out with proper file names, saving you the manual copy-and-rename step. For someone who wants a running collection without lifting a finger, that's a genuine convenience.
Ethan's take: "For grabbing one photo, once, it's overkill — you're installing software to save yourself thirty seconds. If you want hundreds of these over a year without touching the folder yourself, sure, let something else do the watching. Just stick to something well-reviewed and actively maintained, since you're handing it access to a folder Windows manages on its own."
Before you share or reuse these images
Spotlight images are licensed to Microsoft for its own use, not released into the public domain. Setting one as your own desktop or lock screen wallpaper, on your own device, is exactly the personal use the feature is built for. Posting one online, printing it, or using it in anything you distribute is different — you don't hold the license, and neither does anyone who forwarded you the file. Treat a picture you love the same way you'd treat any other photographer's copyrighted work if you want to use it beyond your own screen: look for a licensed source.
Shared PCs, tablets, and remote sessions
On a PC with more than one user account, the Assets folder is per-account, not shared — %LOCALAPPDATA% resolves to whichever account is currently signed in, so you need to be signed into the account whose lock screen you actually liked, not a different one on the same machine.
On a tablet or any touch-only device, a long press on the file takes the place of a right-click and brings up the same context menu, including Set as desktop background once you're on the copy with the .jpg ending.
Over Remote Desktop or inside a virtual machine, the same path applies — but it resolves inside that session's own profile, not your physical PC's. If you're trying to grab a picture from the host machine while connected remotely, you'll need to browse to it through a mapped drive or shared folder rather than expecting the remote session's Assets folder to show your host's cache.
Frequently asked questions
Where exactly are Windows Spotlight images stored?
At %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets, on both Windows 11 and Windows 10, under your own signed-in user profile.
Why don't the files in that folder have file extensions?
Windows stores its own cache without labeling the file type, since only Windows itself is meant to read it. Copying the file and adding .jpg tells your photo viewer and Windows how to open it — the underlying picture data is a normal JPEG the whole time.
Why is the Assets folder empty or nearly empty?
Spotlight only downloads images once your lock screen background is actually set to use it. Turn that on under Settings > Personalization > Lock screen, then lock and unlock the PC once to trigger a fresh download.
I can't find yesterday's picture anymore — what happened?
The Assets folder only holds a handful of recent files at a time and clears older ones automatically. If it wasn't copied out the same day it appeared, it's most likely already gone, with no way to bring it back.
How do I tell which files are real wallpaper photos and which are just promotional tiles?
Wide, high-resolution files are the lock-screen photography. Small, narrow, or oddly cropped ones are the occasional "did you know" style tiles Spotlight also delivers into the same folder — turn on the preview pane to check before you commit to one.
Will renaming the file inside the Assets folder break anything?
It can — Windows may re-download it or skip it in the next rotation if you rename or move the original in place. Always copy the file elsewhere first and rename the copy, leaving the original untouched.
Do I need to unhide files first to get to that folder?
No. Pasting the exact folder path into File Explorer's address bar navigates you straight there whether hidden items are shown or not — the hidden-items toggle only affects folders you're browsing into by clicking, not a path you've typed directly.
Can I set the same picture as my lock screen too, not just my desktop?
Yes — go to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen, set the background type to Picture, and browse to your saved copy. That locks the lock screen to that exact image, separate from the desktop setting.
Will this still work now that Windows 10 has reached end of support?
Yes. The Assets folder and the Set as desktop background steps have nothing to do with the October 14, 2025 end-of-support date, and work the same regardless of whether a device is enrolled in Extended Security Updates.
Is it okay to use these images somewhere other than my own desktop, like printing one or sharing it?
Personal use on your own devices fits how the feature is intended to be used. Public sharing, printing for distribution, or commercial use is different — Microsoft licenses these images for its own product, not for free redistribution.
On a shared family PC, whose Assets folder do I need?
Your own signed-in account's — the path is per-user, not shared across accounts on the same machine. Sign into the account whose lock screen showed the picture you want before you go looking for it.
Does this work over Remote Desktop or inside a virtual machine?
The same path works inside that session, but it points to that session's own profile, not a separate physical PC you're connected to. To grab a file from a host machine while working remotely, use a mapped or shared drive instead.
Are there apps that automate saving these images so I don't have to dig through the folder myself?
Yes, a small category of tools and browser extensions watch that folder and copy new images out automatically with proper names. Worthwhile if you want an ongoing collection; unnecessary if you only want one specific picture, once.
Why doesn't "Set as desktop background" show up when I right-click the renamed photo?
On Windows 11, that option can be tucked under "Show more options" in the condensed right-click menu, or reachable directly with Shift + F10 instead of a plain right-click. Windows 10 shows it on the first menu without any extra step.
I run two monitors — can one Spotlight photo stretch across both instead of repeating?
Yes, using the Span fit option in Settings > Personalization > Background, which treats every connected monitor as one continuous canvas for a single image instead of repeating it on each screen separately.
If I turn off Windows Spotlight on my lock screen, does that delete copies I already saved?
No. Turning Spotlight off only stops new downloads into the Assets folder going forward. Any file you already copied out to your own Pictures folder is a completely separate file at that point and is unaffected.
Revision note. Originally published August 31, 2016. Rewritten August 19, 2026 for Windows 11 and Windows 10. The Assets folder itself hasn't moved in a decade; what's changed is Windows 10's support status and the shape of Windows 11's right-click menu, both covered above. If you're still on the workbench trying to get one machine looking right before a customer comes back for it, we hope this saves you the ten minutes it used to cost.