Windows 10

Optimizing Backgrounds, Themes

You can access personalization settings at any time by using the Personalization page in Settings. To access this page, simply right-click on the desktop and click Personalize. Personalization settings control the backgrounds used on the desktop and lock screen, the window colors, the themes and more. Before you work with Windows 10 backgrounds and themes, it's important to note that by default Windows 10 automatically picks an accent color for graphics and window edges from the background. Although this can be a beautiful effect, it can also be rather jarring if you have different backgrounds on different desktops or rapidly shift through backgrounds using the slideshow option.

Customizing and Creating Your Own Desktop Backgrounds

If you really want to express your true self, the desktop background can help you do it. The Windows desktop can display a solid background color or a picture as its wallpaper. Windows 10 provides a starter set of background images that you can use as wallpaper.

To access the Background page, simply right-click on the desktop and click Personalize.

The default wallpaper images are stored in subfolders of the %WinDir%\Web\Wallpaper folder, where %WinDir% is an environment variable that points to the base installation folder for Windows such as C:\Windows. For the most part, these images are sized for either widescreen viewing at 1920 x 1200, but there may also be images sized for widescreen viewing on stretched desktops at 3840 x 1200. If you select an image at one of these sizes and your computer monitor has a different display resolution size, Windows resizes the image automatically every time the image is used.

Note:
The best pictures for stretched desktops are panoramas, as panoramas are very wide, and when you are working with backgrounds and themes, you'll find backgrounds and themes designed for stretched desktops are often referred to as panoramic backgrounds or panoramic themes.
Tip:
To remove the overhead associated with background resizing, you can size your background images so that they are the same size as your preferred display resolution. If you do this, however, make sure that you save the re-sized images to a new location and then choose this new location. Don't overwrite the existing images.

You can also create background images to use as wallpaper. To do so, simply create appropriately sized images as .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpg, .jpeg, .dib, .png, .tif, or .tiff files, and then add these files to the appropriate subfolders of the %WinDir%\Web\Wallpaper folder. If you do not have access to that folder, or if you would prefer to not make changes to that folder, you can also use pictures from your Pictures Library or elsewhere.

Note:
You should optimize every background image you use. If you don't do this, you risk affecting your computer's performance because Windows will need to resize the image every time it is used.

Windows 10 allows you to use three different types of backgrounds:

  • Pictures
  • Solid Colors
  • Slideshows

Using Pictures for Backgrounds

You can set the picture background for the desktop by completing the following steps:

  1. Right-click an open area of the desktop, and then click Personalize. In the left column, Background is selected by default.
  2. On the Background list, choose Picture. Next, click the picture you want to use, or click Browse to select a picture in another location, such as your personal Documents or Pictures folder.
  3. When you are using a background image, you must also use the Choose A Fit option to select a display option for the background. The positioning options are:
    • Fill:
      Fills the desktop background with the image. Generally, the fill is accomplished by zooming in, which may result in the sides of the image being cropped.
    • Fit:
      Fits the image to the desktop background. Because current proportions are maintained in most cases, this is a good option for photos and large images that you want to see without stretching or expanding.
    • Stretch:
      Stretches the image to fill the desktop background. The proportions are maintained as closely as possible, and then the height is stretched to fill any remaining gaps.
    • Tile:
      Repeats the image so that it covers the entire screen. This is a good option for small images and icons (and also to get a single image to fill two screens.
    • Center:
      Centers the image on the desktop background. Any area that the image doesn't fill uses the current desktop background color. Click Change Background Color to set the background color for the area the image doesn't fill.
    • Span:
      Allows the image to fill a stretched desktop by spanning the space from one desktop to the other.

Using Solid Colors for Backgrounds

You can set a solid color for the desktop background by completing the following steps:

  1. Right-click an open area of the desktop, and then click Personalize. In the left column, Background is selected by default.
  2. On the Background list, choose Solid Color.
  3. Under Background Colors, click the background color that you want to use.

Using Slideshow Backgrounds

With a slideshow, the background image changes automatically based on a specific schedule, such as every 30 minutes or daily. Before you can use a slideshow, however, you need to create a picture album containing the pictures you want to display in the background.

The default picture album is the Pictures library in your personal folders. As pictures in your library likely aren't sized or optimized for the desktop, displaying the images may be rather inefficient in terms of system resource usage. If you want to reduce resource usage, you should optimize the size of images and then copy these to a new folder that you then use as your photo album.

Tip:
The optimum size of images for your device depends on the display settings. To check the display settings for you device, click Start and then click Settings. In the Settings dialog box, click System. With Display selected in the left pane, scroll down in the main pane and then select Advanced Display Settings. Under Resolution, you'll see the current resolution for the device's display, such as 1280 x 1024 or 1920 x 1200. If you've stretched the desktop on your device and want to create a stretched background, the background size should be 2 times the width of the display. Thus, if the display is 1920 pixels wide, the image should be 3840 pixels wide.

You configure the slideshow for the background by completing the following steps:

  1. Right-click an open area of the desktop, and then click Personalize. In the left column, Background is selected by default.
  2. On the Background list, choose Slideshow.
  3. By default, your Pictures library is used as the source album for the slideshow. To use a different source, click Browse to select a picture in another location, such as your personal Documents or Pictures folder.
    Tip:
    If you have administrator access to the device, you can set one of the Windows wallpaper folders as the source. Click Browse, navigate to the base folder for wallpaper, such as C:\Windows\Web and then choose the folder to use.
  4. Use the Change Picture Every list to specify how often pictures should be rotated, such as every 30 minutes, every hour, every 6 hours or every day.
  5. You must also select a display option for the background. The positioning options are:
    • Center:
      Centers the image on the desktop background. Any area that the image doesn't fill uses the current desktop background color. Click Change Background Color to set the background color for the area the image doesn't fill.
    • Fill:
      Fills the desktop background with the image. Generally, the fill is accomplished by zooming in, which may result in the sides of the image being cropped.
    • Fit:
      Fits the image to the desktop background. Because current proportions are maintained in most cases, this is a good option for photos and large images that you want to see without stretching or expanding.
    • Stretch:
      Stretches the image to fill the desktop background. The proportions are maintained as closely as possible, and then the height is stretched to fill any remaining gaps.
    • Tile:
      Repeats the image so that it covers the entire screen. This is a good option for small images and icons (and also to get a single image to fill two screens).
    • Span:
      Allows the image to fill a stretched desktop by spanning the space from one desktop to the other.
[Content] [Next]
  1. Personalizing the Appearance of Windows 10
  2. Optimizing Backgrounds, Themes
  3. Customizing the Lock Screen
  4. Selecting and Tuning Themes
  5. Customizing Your Mouse Pointers