How To Change Lock and Login Screen Backgrounds In Windows 10?

When it comes to changing wallpapers, everyone has their own choices. Windows 10 provides you with a great number of choices for personalization for your PC. One of them is changing the image of lock screen and login screen of your PC. Lock screen is the one shown to you when booting your PC having time, date, network and battery indicator. By default Windows 10 will show you random background image for this lock screen. Clicking on this lock screen will show you the next login screen where you can enter you PIN, password or image pattern.

Though Windows 10 handles these lock and login screens differently the same image is shown in both lock and login screens. In this article let us explore, how to change lock and login screen backgrounds in Windows 10.

How To Change Lock Screen Image In Windows 10?

First of all, hit ‘Windows’ key on your keyboard or click on ‘Start’ button. Type ‘settings’ and choose the ‘Settings’ option from the match.

When you’re inside the settings window, click on ‘Personalization’ option. You can also use ‘Win + I’ shortcut keys to open ‘Windows Settings’ panel.

Now, you’ll see many options there but you need to look for ‘Lock screen’ from the left side menu and click on that. Windows will show the preview of your lock screen at the first. Then, there will be a ‘Background’ option below the preview image with the dropdown. Click on the dropdown to see there choices: ‘Windows spotlight’, ‘Picture’ and ‘Slideshow’. By default Windows 10 will use ‘Windows spotlight’ option which downloads the images and shows different image in the lock screen periodically.

If you want to change to different fixed background image of the lock screen, select the ‘Picture’ option. You can either choose from one of the listed pictures or click on the ‘Browse’ button to select an image from your PC.

When you find an image, click on ‘Choose picture’ button and it will be set as the background image for your lock screen.

For creating a slideshow on the lock screen, you need to select the option ‘Slideshow’. Then, add a folder where you have bunch of images.

Select that folder and the photos in that folder will be shown at your lock screen as a slideshow.

Change Login Screen Image

In ‘Windows Settings > Personalization > Lock Screen’, look for the option ‘Show lock screen background picture on the sign-in screen’. Turn off this option to disable the lock screen image showing on login or sign-in screen and Windows will show you a solid Windows blue color instead.

Disable Lock Screen

You may wonder what is the purpose of this lock screen which is an additional step before reaching the login screen. Frankly there are no answers to this question. With the latest Windows 10 updates, it is also not possible to disable the lock screen even with registry modifications. So you need to see that extra screen when booting and unlocking your PC.

There is a trick to disable the lock screen when unlocking your PC. Go to ‘C: > Windows > SystemApps’ folder and find the folder ‘Microsoft.LockApp_cw5n1h2txyewy’.

This is the folder that controls the lock screen appearance when you lock the PC. Just rename the folder to any name like adding ‘_old’ suffix. Now press ‘Ctrl + Alt + Del’ and click on ‘Lock’ option to check that you are directly going to the login screen. At least you can save time in avoiding seeing the lock screen every time. Remember this only works on the locking, when you boot your PC, the lock screen will appear at first before you see the login screen.