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Saving the SpotLight

Its a lazy sunday and the headline might be a bit confusing.

This will be a short DIY for people who love Microsoft Windows Spotlight feature available on laptops and desktops running Windows10.

Ever since i purchased my new laptop I wondered how did they got such a cool feature(which was there already on 8.1 ) . Since then it has been improving right from day one.What I did not liked was Microsoft had these wallpapers got securely placed in someplace in your computer and most of the users have no idea where to find them.

Reason:Windows Users actually loved those photos which came randomly and at times as per choice of the users (if you like a picture you will have a like dislike option.

Windows actually stores all these photos right on your device but still normal users cant see them in any of the folders which they are used to.

Sadly we cant take a screenshot of a windows desktop lockscreen on windows10.

Now to save and see all the lockscreen wallpapers of windows spotlight I found a tougher way to find all of them from Windows Central's website . follow the steps in the URL below.

Now coming to the little easier part as demonstrated by a Microsoft Windows Tech Support I found these steps helpful

Step1 Start > Settings > Personalization > Lock screen > Background > Windows spotlight

Step2

After turning this on, go to your PC user folder (in which user account you have turned on Windows spotlight).

C: > Users > (your pc username)

Now, you have to visible hidden folders because those spotlight images stored in hidden location. To do this, you’ll need to open Windows Explorer and click on the upper View tab. And then check the Hidden items checkbox.

step3

After this, AppData folder will be visible and then go to the following location. Spotlight lockscreen located in the Assets folder. But all files are not the spotlight wallpaper.

AppData > Local > Packages > Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_** > LocalState > Assets

In this folder, you will see files like the image. Now, order the folder by file size. Because small files (generally <200 kb) are not spotlight wallpaper. Then Copy (hit Ctrl + C to copy) large files from the folder.

Step4

Now, open another folder; one that you can easily find again, and Paste (hit Ctrl + V to paste) your copied files into this new folder. Those files have no extensions, you have to add .jpg extension to view them. You can do this individually (just click on a file and change its name to pic.jpg), or you can use the Command Prompt to change all the file extensions at once. To change all the file extensions at once, open the folder you saved the files in and open command prompt (hit Shift + Right click to open command prompt) for the folder. Now, type the following and hit Enter to change all the file extensions at once. ren * *.jpg Now, all the files should be end with .jpg extension. You will now be able to see all of the images that have recently cycled through Windows Spotlight. Delete any files you don’t want and wallpaper away!

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