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Find the current Lock Screen image file in Windows 10

Windows 10 comes with a nice feature which allows you to have a random image shown on the Lock screen every time you see it. It downloads beautiful images from the Internet and shows them on your lock screen. So, every time you boot or lock Windows 10, you will see a new lovely image. If you would like to find the currently displayed Lock Screen image file on your disk drive, here is how it can be done.

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The path to the image which is used as your current Lock Screen background is stored in the Registry. If you point your Registry editor to the following path:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lock Screen\Creative

You'll find it under the string value LandscapeAssetPath. This value stores the full path to the image for the landscape screen orientation. The value named PortraitAssetPath stores the image path which will be shown in the portrait screen orientation. Using this value, you can find the desired file. You can do it as follows.

  1. Open Registry Editor.
  2. Go to the mentioned key:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lock Screen\Creative

    Tip: see How to jump to the desired registry key with one click

    Windows 10 creative subkey opened

  3. Double click the LandscapeAssetPath value to copy its value data to the clipboard:Windows 10 copy value
  4. Now, press Win + R key together on your keyboard to open the Run dialog and paste the following into the Run box:
    explorer /select, [path_you_copied]

    The special /select argument of the Explorer app will open the folder directly with the required file selected. Refer to the article File Explorer command line arguments in Windows 10 to learn more about File Explorer command line arguments. See the following screenshot:
    Windows 10 run explorer with lock screen background image openedWindows 10 explorer with lock screen background imageOnce File Explorer is opened with the required file selected in the file list, copy it to some other place, e.g. to your Pictures folder and add the *.jpg extension to the file name. Now it can be opened with any image viewer:Windows 10 lock screen image opened

To save your time, I have created a simple batch file which does this automatically for you:

@echo off 
setlocal
set filename=
for /f "tokens=2*" %%a in ('reg query "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lock Screen\Creative" /v LandscapeAssetPath') do set "LandscapeAssetPath=%%b"
for %%i in ("%LandscapeAssetPath%") do (
set filename=%%~ni
)
copy /Y "%LandscapeAssetPath%" "%userprofile%\Pictures\%filename%.jpg"
explorer.exe /select,"%userprofile%\Pictures\%filename%.jpg" 
start "" "%userprofile%\Pictures\%filename%.jpg"

Download it from here:

Download the batch file

Run the downloaded batch file. The current Lock Screen image background will be placed in the Pictures folder and opened automatically in your default image viewer. See the following video:

Tip: you can subscribe to our YoutTube channel HERE.

That's it.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

7 thoughts on “Find the current Lock Screen image file in Windows 10”

  1. Last year when I got this PC I happened to see a picture – among thousands I was copying over from the old PC, and I set it as my lock screen. So it’s just a picture I took, not one of the ones Windows provides. And of course now I’d love to know where that picture is stored on the PC! I had a look at my registry just now and both LandscapeAssetPath and PortraitAssetPath had blank values. Is there a different place Windows would store the path to a user-provided lock screen photo? Thanks in advance!

  2. The file currently being shown on the windows login screen is NOT found in the file location identified by your method. I did however find images that may or may not be used as the Login screen background.

    I am looking for the “current” Login screen background for the Current user.

    If you know of a different location or a way to identify recently accessed files please let me know

  3. The path and file indicated by this registry key is definitely not the current landscape photo used by the lockscreen. Can you please update with the current location of where this file is stored? I have a recent build of Win10.

  4. in newer win10 version the path to the images is located here Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Creative\S-1-5-21-1653659875-2331660567-2680887133-1001

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