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There is another question on here that allows users to find the path to their current background image through a cmd command.

How could I find out the path to the current desktop image?

In Windows 10 this no longer works. It only returns the first image in the folder, it does not change with the backgrounds as they transition. I need a similar command that returns the path(s) to the current image on the desktop background(s) that actually works in Windows 10 if one exists.

A copy of the current wallpaper can be found by typing below path in Windows File Explorer address bar

Path 1 -
%AppData%MicrosoftWindowsThemesCachedFiles

If you don’t find a copy of your current desktop background image here, try below path instead

Path 2 -
%AppData%MicrosoftWindowsThemesTranscodedWallpaper

Note: The file TranscodedWallpaper in Path 2 does not have a file extension. Use "Open With" or "How do you want to open this file?" dialogue box and select any image viewer, such as, "Windows Photo Viewer", "Honeyview" or the "Photos" app.

Note for Windows 10: The above locations have limitations. For example, if the wallpaper you’re looking for is no longer visible in the ‘Background’ tab in the Settings app, you can’t recover it. It will work for your last five wallpapers but nothing older. (Source)

Default Windows wallpapers can be found in

%SystemRoot%Web

You will see 3 folders

• "4K" for 4K wallpapers,


• "Screen" for lock screen backgrounds, &


• "Wallpapers" for Default Windows wallpapers

Installed themes (Aero, etc):

%SystemRoot%ResourcesThemes

Per-user installed themes (including pre-installed from OEM):

%LocalAppData%MicrosoftWindowsThemes  

If you are looking for the location of Lock Screen images - visit this SuperUser question.

Personally, I use John's Background Switcher to manage my desktop backgrounds.

John's Background Switcher has an option to current/previous desktop backgrounds (ones set by the app). Right click on tray icon and select View Current Picture and the current desktop background opens in Windows Photo Viewer or your default image viewer). In Windows Photo Viewer, you can right click on the image & select Open File Location to view the original location of current desktop background in windows file explorer.

Windows 8 and 10 still store the original path of the current background image - rather than the cached / transcoded file as in xypha's answer:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktopTranscodedImageCache

Microsoft doesn't want things to be easy though: this isn't plain text so you have to decode it from binary.

The Winhelponline website has compiled a couple of scripts (VBA and PowerShell) which can print the image name, and launch Explorer to point to the image file.

http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/find-current-wallpaper-file-path-windows-10/

I have Windows 10, version 1709. One of the other answers got me looking in the registry and I found exactly what I needed in clear text at

HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktopWallPaper

No decoding needed.

You don't explain exactly what you want to achieve so, I can give some tips here based on a guess: you want to change your wallpaper in certain conditions (for example one wallpaper every time your restart your computer) or to use a custom file as wallpaper.

In Windows 7 the wallpaper was usually found in %AppData%MicrosoftWindowsThemesTranscodedWallpaper.

In Windows 10 you will find it in %AppData%MicrosoftWindowsThemesCachedFiles.

You can also interrogate the registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktopTranscodedImageCache but note the warnings below about programs that are NOT writing a file to disk!

If you want to build your own CMD script this might be unreliable IF you set the wallpaper not from Windows but from an external program. For example if I see a nice mage in my browser I set it as wallpaper directly from there. Same for IrfanView. I can easily name another 10 popular programs that could change the wallpaper to a custom path.

Note that some programs are changing the wallpaper without actually writing a file to disk. This can be done by hooking to the Microsoft Windows Desktop window and drawing directly on its canvas. This is how GIF/AVI animations are drawn on desktop.

There is another issue if you build your own script: How to you handle images that don't have same aspect ratio as your desktop, or when desktop resolution changes?

The solution (if I guessed your problem correctly) would be to use a program like John's Background Switcher or BioniX Desktop Background Changer. The later is much more customizable and can be controlled via command line. It also has auto-detection to detect the best way to resize the image (fill/fit/tile). BioniX can also draw GIF without writing anything to disk (as explained above).

A even better way would be to use the "Lock on folder" option.


Set BioniX to change your wallpaper every 60 seconds (don't worry, you won't see a new wallpaper every 60 seconds since you will use only one file). Set BioniX to lock on any folder (let's say c:Wallpapers). Inside that folder you put a single file called something like "My Wallpaper.jpg". BioniX will use that file as wallpaper every 60 seconds. Now, every time you want to change the wallpaper you replace the old "My Wallpaper.jpg" with your new file. BioniX will see the change you have done to the folder and apply the new file (within 60 seconds).

Let us know what you want to achieve with your script to get a better solution.

To get the "Transcoded" PATH in cleartext, do this in PowerShell:

$TIC=(Get-ItemProperty 'HKCU:Control PanelDesktop' TranscodedImageCache -ErrorAction Stop).TranscodedImageCache

[System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetString($TIC) -replace '(.+)([A-Z]:[0-9a-zA-Z\])+','$2'