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.

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

   

3. Double click the LandscapeAssetPath value to copy its value data to the clipboard:
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:
   Once 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:

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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