Windows 10 stores your Pictures folder in your user profile. In most cases, its path is something like C:\Users\SomeUser\Pictures. You can open it quickly by typing %userprofile%\Pictures in File Explorer's address bar. Let's see how to move this folder to another location.
There are several ways to access your Pictures folder. For example, you can enter "%userprofile%\Pictures" in File Explorer's address bar as mentioned above. Or you can open This PC and find the Pictures folder there. In this article, I will use the path with the %userprofile% environment variable as a reference.
You might want to change the default location of the Pictures folder in order to save space on the partition where your operating system is installed (your C: drive). Here is how it can be done.
To move the Pictures folder in Windows 10, do the following.
- Open File Explorer
- Type or copy-paste the following in the address bar: %userprofile%
- Press the Enter key on the keyboard. You user profile folder will be opened.
See the Pictures folder. - Right click the Pictures folder and select Properties.
- In Properties, go to the Location tab, and click on the Move button.
- In the folder browse dialog, select the new folder you want to store your Pictures.
- Click on the OK button to make the change.
- When prompted, click on Yes to move all your files from the old location to the new folder.
This way, you can change the location of your Pictures folder to another folder, or to a folder on a different disk drive, or even to a mapped network drive. This will allow you to save space on the system drive, which can be particularly useful for users who keep large files in Pictures.
If you reinstall Windows 10, your custom Pictures folder stored on a different drive won't disappear with all your data if you accidentally format your system partition. The next time you save a file to the Pictures folder, Windows will use the new location that you set.
Here is the full set of articles on how to move your user folders:
- How to Move the Desktop Folder in Windows 10
- How to Move the Documents Folder in Windows 10
- How to Move the Downloads Folder in Windows 10
- How to Move the Music Folder in Windows 10
- How to Move the Pictures Folder in Windows 10
- How to Move the Searches Folder in Windows 10
- How to Move the Videos Folder in Windows 10
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Windows 10 makes a job that was done in Windows 7 so difficult…I hope Win 7 comes back
This does not work. I can’t copy my pictures, I can’t move my pictures. Stupid windows did an update and now I can’t do anything with my pictures.
I agree with Donald and Patricia. With Windows 7 I could easily download my pics from my camera to the computer. Then open the general topic “Pictures” and drag the individual pics to the appropriate folder for keeping each picture. For example: I may have 20 pics for various people. I want to move all of the new pics of my grandson into the pic folder with his name, thereby keeping all pics of him in one folder. I have not been able to figure out how to do that with Windows 10. Is this even possible?
Windows 10 sux
Hello, I get the following message when attempting to move the location: “Can’t move the folder because there is a folder in the same location that can’t be redirected. Access is denied.”
could you share please the command you execute?
I also get this message
However, I have opted for ‘No’ in response to the question about moving files, since I’m trying to switch locations from my OneDrive to my hard drive and I don’t want to move photos from my OneDrive
I just want the Pictures folder shown as ‘On this computer’ to refer to a folder on this computer and not in my OneDrive
I keep asking this question…How to move the location of where my edited/cropped photos are going, instead of going into my Documents folder, this is wrong. I don’t know why they’re going there. But every answer is saying how to move the Pictures folder. That’s not what I’m asking. Whenever I crop or edit a photo, in any way, I save it. I could not find it anywhere, until I seen them all in the Documents folder. Please help me to change the path of where the edited photos are going. Thank you.
garbage OS created by morons.
The above does not work if one is trying to move the Pictures folder out from under the OneDrive folder, and back to where it was before the OneDrive installation put in there. Does one have to turn off backup on that folder first?
This remedy, if it is one, is difficult to follow. Win7 as I recollect had no such problem, that I detected anyway.
I have been trying for weeks to figure out how to find my pics and move them to arranging by month. I just jeep going in circles..This is the worst most frustrating program..windows 10 . Not getting it!!!
it tells me about an error or access denied what should i do?
Please check out this post: https://winaero.com/how-to-take-ownership-and-get-full-access-to-files-and-folders-in-windows-10/