Find the Current Desktop Background Wallpaper File in Windows 10
If you’re using desktop background
slideshow or third-party wallpaper changer software and want to find the file
name of the currently displayed desktop wallpaper, then this article is for
you. The current wallpaper path is are stored in the registry but is not
displayed in the modern Personalize settings page in Windows 10.
This post tells you how to find the current
wallpaper file name and path in Windows 8 and Windows 10.
How to Find the Current Desktop Background File Name
in Windows 10
Here are five different methods to find
the current desktop background (wallpaper) file name, starting with the easiest
option.
Find the wallpaper image in your Themes
folder in Windows 10
When you set wallpaper image of any
format, Windows converts that file to JPEG format and also sometimes reduces its quality.
The converted wallpaper image may exist in one of the three different locations
mentioned below, depending upon the method you used to set the wallpaper.
When you right-click on an image file and
choose Set as
desktop background in the context menu, a copy of the
image file is converted and stored as
TranscodedWallpaper without file extension.
The transcoded
wallpaper is stored here:
%appdata\Microsoft\Windows\Themes
Type the above folder path in Run dialog or Explorer
address bar to access the location.
All you need to do is copy the transcoded image from the
above to a different location, add the .jpg extension
and use it.
If you used the Browse.. option in Personalize settings
to set the desktop background, then the converted and up-scaled (matching your
display resolution) version of the image is stored in the following directory.
%appdata\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\CachedFiles
The file naming convention may be like CachedImage_1920_1080_POS0.jpg where
the numbers indicate the current display resolution of 1920 x 1080. POS0 may
indicate the monitor number (if using multiple monitors.)
In case you used neither methods above, but set the
desktop background wallpaper via Windows Photo Viewer,
then the transcoded JPEG file stored in the following folder as
Windows
Photo Viewer Wallpaper.jpg, and
the file path is written to the registry.%AppData%\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows Photo Viewer
Note that the quality of the transcoded
and converted (to JPEG) wallpaper may not be exactly the same as the original.
The registry value
TranscodedImageCache is updated in all of the above cases.
Tags
windows10