Screensaver - how to display multiple folders/subfolders?

I'm new to Windows 11, new computer a few weeks ago (yay). On my old Windows 10 I was able to set up the screensaver to shuffle thru all (couple thousand) my pictures which are put into folders and subfolders. But when trying to do this on Win 11 it only shows one photo and doesn't shuffle at all. What I've done is gone into the screensaver settings, chosen "Photos" and under "browse for photos" I chose OneDrive because that's where all the folders are. That's all I had to do with Win 10 but seems it's not the case in Win 11. Is there any way for me to get it to shuffle thru all the folders? Thanks in advance.

I don't use a screensaver, but it may be that whatever folder you want to use as a screensaver shuffle has to reside on your computer rather than the cloud. Make yourself a test folder on the computer, put a few photos in it, point your screensaver to that folder, and see if it will shuffle then.

I'm guessing that's probably the issue as I picked a picture folder on My PC (not sure why it's there, I have everything in Onedrive, but whatever) and it worked. Sucks, thought I could have my cake and eat it too. I've tried to make it work on the lockscreen instead and not having luck. Super bummed as people walking by the computer always stopped to look at the pics.

I would think that it SHOULD work as it did in 10. Are you on release or insider version?

Here is how to make your screensaver work on the lockscreen....

Setup your screensaver as normal. Let's say that you have the screensaver set to kick in after 15 minutes of inactivity. The problem is that once on the lockscreen, it will turn into a black screen (turning off the screen) after just one minute. In order to see your photos (or any other screensaver), you need to change the timeout for the lockscreen. I don't know why, but this setting is not normally exposed in the GUI. So, to be able to change that timeout we have to perform two steps:

1) We will modify a registry setting to expose this setting in the GUI.
2) We make the change to the timeout in the GUI.

Start by opening an elevated command prompt.
Run this command:


From that same command prompt, run this:


This will open power options. Select Display > Console lock display off timeout and set the timeout to a value higher than the amount of time for the screensaver to kick in. For example if you have the screensaver set to to kick off after 15 minutes and you set this value to 30 minutes, then the screensaver will run after 15 minutes and run until the 30 minute mark at which time the screen will be turned off. If you want the screen to stay on and display the screensaver continuously, set this timeout to 0.

I am on the regular release. Thanks hsehestedt, I will try this later. I just hate fooling with the registry but this is bugging the heck out of me. I feel like this possibly won't work (but going to give it a shot anyway) because it will show ONE picture from my Onedrive but will not shuffle thru.

This is not a solution for the OneDrive issue. That's something I have not experimented with.

BTW, this is not a registry setting I would be worried about because you can always reverse it . It's not a setting that messes with some core function of Windows so it's 100% safe.

Ok, thanks a bunch. Not sure how I'm going to get it to shuffle thru, it's so frustrating. I know if I move all the pics to a local folder it will work but the whole point of having them on OneDrive is to have them in one place, not two. I want everything streamlined, etc. Grrrr. I think I'm going to have to give up the screensaver photos. I was having problems with the lockscreen not showing up so I think your above post will help me with that. Maybe I can get the lockscreen to shuffle thru the photos somehow. You'd think Microsoft would have thought about this with everything going to the cloud nowadays.

I have some thoughts on how to possibly make this work, but don't know for sure if my idea will work. It may be tomorrow before I get a chance to test, but will let you know if I work out a solution.

Thanks, that would be awesome and greatly appreciated, no hurry!!!!