Long standing File Explorer irritation.

When I want to change my desktop background, I open my "wallpapers" folder in file explorer. I have about 250 jpegs in this folder, set to view a "Extra Large Icons". Whenever I scroll past a pageful (the ones visible without scrolling) and right-click a picture to set as the desktop background, Explorer instantly jumps back to the top, so that the first jpeg is again visible. So, to select another picture, I have to scroll again and look for it.

This happens no matter what view I set for the folder (large icons list etc.) It has happened as far back as I can remember, even in Windows 8, I think.
I am seriously so fed up with this behaviour that I now use a third party file viewer to manage my desktop background, which I change very often.

Is there a workaround for this autoscroll back to top? I have Googled extensively, but most of the responses are to deal with other wallpaper issues. Maybe I am using the wrong search terms, I don;t know.

Do you see the same thing in other folders, other types of files? Might check if the Indexing of a drive is causing an issue. I've seen such an issue with Photos loading the first time after restart/reboot.

No, only when setting a wallpaper.

Edit: Indexing is turned off on all drives.

This doesn't seem to be the default behavior. I just tried it on 4 different systems and none of them show that behavior.

Try seeing if it behaves that way in Safe Mode. If not, do the usual process of elimination of services, apps that start automatically, etc.

Okay, will try safe mode first. Same behaviour in my laptop, though.

Subscriber43 said:

When I want to change my desktop background, I open my "wallpapers" folder in file explorer. I have about 250 jpegs in this folder, set to view a "Extra Large Icons". Whenever I scroll past a pageful (the ones visible without scrolling) and right-click a picture to set as the desktop background, Explorer instantly jumps back to the top, so that the first jpeg is again visible. So, to select another picture, I have to scroll again and look for it.

Click to expand...

hsehestedt said:

This doesn't seem to be the default behavior. I just tried it on 4 different systems and none of them show that behavior

Click to expand...

I can confirm this behaviour. To reproduce this there must be sufficient files that you had to scroll down to see the image you have selected (so try selecting the last file). Setting the View to Icons (Extra large, large, medium, or small) is not necessary, but the larger the icon the more likely it is that you have to scroll down to find a file.

And no, I don't know how to stop this behaviour - but I can offer a workaround.

Just because Explorer has scrolled back to the top doesn't mean the file concerned is no longer selected. It is still selected, and if you use the arrow keys on the keyboard you can step the selection to the previous (or next) image. Explorer will then scroll to your selected file, allowing you to carry on from where you had left off.

EDIT: and I can confirm that the behaviour is exactly the same in Windows 10.

Thank you @Bree!
This is exactly what I was trying to say, and your workaround does the trick.
I still don't understand why Explorer has this behaviour, though. Gonna continue to live with it.

Strange that I cannot duplicate this. There must be some setting that alters this behavior. Just tried it on two more systems (6 in total now) and not a single way behaves as described.

hsehestedt said:

Strange that I cannot duplicate this.

Click to expand...

Yes, very strange. Read my post #6 again. In addition to what I posted there, it appears that the pictures folder you choose a background from must be a local drive, it doesn't appear to happen with a network drive. The folder I used for this test has 95 files in it.

I can reproduce this on almost all my machines. It happens in Windows 8.1, 10 and 11. The only machine that I cannot reproduce this on is running Windows 7.

I can vouch mine have always done this on Win 10 and 11 using thumbnails. My workaround was double clicking to open the images in the Photo app and setting it as desktop background from there to keep my place in explorer but Bree's workaround is quicker. After trying it the arrow down always selects the image directly below my last set image.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Here's a demo video. See if you spot me doing anything wrong. I simply scroll down through my thumbnails and right click on a couple of thumbnails. The only thing that happens is that the context menu is displayed.

NOTE: All my systems are clean installs of Windows 11. Is it possible that this happens only on upgrades?

hsehestedt said:

Here's a demo video. See if you spot me doing anything wrong....

Click to expand...

Ah, I see what's 'wrong'. It's what you're not doing. After scrolling down and right-clicking on an image file near the bottom of the list, you have to select 'Set as desktop background'. It's only then that the Explorer view resets to show the top of the files list.

Ahhh, okay. See, I knew I had to be doing something wrong :)

Personally, I would like to understand why this only happens in Windows since (as @Bree said) 8.1 and up. Other file managers I've tried work as expected.