Solved Set lockscreen wallpaper with command prompt

Hey guys.
I have an image in "C:\Windows\Web\Screen" (its name is "lockscreenwallpaper.jpg").
How can I set it as lockscreen background with cmd?
I want to let the user change it later in settings so changing registry key may cause some restrcitions in settings.

Thanks.

Users are allowed to change their lock screen background, unless you apply a reg key which specifically blocks it.

garlin said:

Code:

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PersonalizationCSP" /v LockScreenImageStatus /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PersonalizationCSP" /v LockScreenImagePath /t REG_SZ /d "\\path\\to\\image" /f
reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PersonalizationCSP" /v LockScreenImageUrl /t REG_SZ /d "\\path\\to\\image" /f

Users are allowed to change their lock screen background, unless you apply a reg key which specifically blocks it.

Click to expand...

Thanks dear garlin.

Thread marked as solved.

garlin said:

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PersonalizationCSP" /v LockScreenImageStatus /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PersonalizationCSP" /v LockScreenImagePath /t REG_SZ /d "\\path\\to\\image" /f reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PersonalizationCSP" /v LockScreenImageUrl /t REG_SZ /d "\\path\\to\\image" /f
Users are allowed to change their lock screen background, unless you apply a reg key which specifically blocks it.

Click to expand...

This isn't quite my experience. The registry entries are some of those set by the Personalisation csp as referenced by Personalization CSP. They seem to function on Windows 10 and 11. They force the lock screen for all users, and don't offer users any opportunity to change the lock screen.

Note the caveat:
"Personalization CSP is supported in Windows Enterprise and Education SKUs. It works in Windows Professional only when SetEduPolicies in SharedPC CSP is set, or when the device is configured in Shared PC mode with BootToCloudPCEnhanced policy."

Despite this caveat the lock screen image is forced. However, it appears to leave the original lock screen unaffected, although you can't see it. The default lock screen is Windows Spotlight, and this will continue to operate - collecting new images and occasionally putting a notification on your fixed lock screen about the new Spotlight image you can't see. You can prevent this by using the appropiate user registry entries to remove the Spotlight lock screen.

I've seen suggestions of additional registry entries to make it appear that SetEduPolicies is set. None worked for me.

Assuming you don't have an InTune/MDM setup, there are other ways of setting SetEduPolicies. The simplest way to be sure you have done this correctly is to create a Provisioning Package with Windows Configuration Designer and install it. Windows Configuration Designer - Free download and install on Windows | Microsoft Store . You need to create an advanced package.

If you do this on an otherwise unmodified Windows 10/11 Pro (I haven't tested on Home editions) and look at lock screen options, Windows Spotlight is not available. So, the lock screen default is picture and no user level action is required to keep Windows Spotlight out of the lock screen completely.

Shared PC technical reference lists additional policy settings to block some windows tips and consumer experiences that are set. These normally don't work on Pro (or Home) editions of windows, but do seem to work. I would regard both, particularly "Turn off Microsoft consumer experiences" as desirable.

There's an extra possibility for Windows 11 Pro devices. Education Policy CSP This will "declare this OS as an education environment." There are suggestions that this can be achieved by a simple registry edit:


Elsewhere EducationSettings.IsEducationEnvironment Property (Windows.System.Profile) - Windows apps shows how to check IsEducationEnvironment is set.

This translates into Powershell as:


(on one line) and will show true if you have SetEduPolicies properly set On Windows 10 or 11 Pro, or IsEducationEnvironment properly set, or the registry entry in Windows 11 Pro. (no testing by me on any Home edition)

Setting the registry entry seems to be enough to enable the group policy "Turn off all Windows spotlight features" to turn off tips, Windows Spotlight on the lock screen. and the Consumer Experiences (at least at new account creation), as well as disabling Spotlight on Background, which is the only part that works on Pro. I haven't investigated this any further yet.

Clearly there is more to be said about MDM and how to apply those policies.

garlin said:

unless you apply a reg key which specifically blocks it.

Click to expand...

I did what you said but after that, in personalization settings it won't let the user to change the lockscreen background and says some settings are restricted by manufacturer (something like that I can't remember the exact message sorry)

Sheikh said:

I did what you said but after that, in personalization settings it won't let the user to change the lockscreen background and says some settings are restricted by manufacturer (something like that I can't remember the exact message sorry)

Click to expand...

Most of the known working solutions for changing the image by script or command line depend on a GPO, or the PersonalizationCSP (which basically a GPO). The drawback is you're not allowing the user to change it again from Settings.

There's lots of other dubious "answers", which probably worked at some point but don't function uniformly on W10 & 11.

@Brink's tutorial on Change Lock Screen Background explains how to change the Lock Screen preference to Picture (as opposed to Spotlight or Slideshow). But it doesn't explain how to actually pick a different picture.

For security reasons, your lock screen image cache folder is protected by SYSTEM rights, and there's a hideous mess of reg keys that manage it. There is a WinRT API that allows you to change the image preference, and Jos Lieben provides a working script:

set-windows10LockScreen.ps1 · master · Jos / assortedFunctions · GitLab

If you remove the top section where it downloads the image file from a web source, and a line near the bottom where it removes the file at the end, then it works just fine to change the image. Note: this script only changes the image, it doesn't update the Lock Screen preference to Picture. Which @Brink's tutorial does explain.

garlin said:

@Brink's tutorial on Change Lock Screen Background explains how to change the Lock Screen preference to Picture (as opposed to Spotlight or Slideshow). But it doesn't explain how to actually pick a different picture.

Click to expand...

Hey mate,

Sure it does. Steps 5B and 5C.

Doesn't look like a script or command to me... @Sheikh's building install images, so he needs a script.
But I did use your tutorial for the three common reg keys.

garlin said:

Doesn't look like a script or command to me... @Sheikh's building install images, so he needs a script.
But I did use your tutorial for the three common reg keys.

Code:

Set-LockScreen.ps1 -Spotlight
Set-LockScreen.ps1 -Picture -FileName background.jpg
Set-LockScreen.ps1 -Slideshow

Click to expand...

Thanks dear garlin.

I think that the origin of the WinRT API based script is here: Setting the lock screen background with PowerShell. A little more explanation here: Awaiting WinRT's IAsyncAction in PowerShell

To see the horrible hacks that we used to do, look at the history of Jos Lieben's script (first commit / test). I can remember doing this on Windows 10. I also tried the NoChangingLockScreen policy. It disables the interface in Settings, but doesn't prevent users from changing the lock screen type with registry edits described by @Brink

garlin said:

Doesn't look like a script or command to me... @Sheikh's building install images, so he needs a script.
But I did use your tutorial for the three common reg keys.

Code:

Set-LockScreen.ps1 -Spotlight
Set-LockScreen.ps1 -Picture -FileName background.jpg
Set-LockScreen.ps1 -Slideshow

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing the script. I tested it out. Setting slideshow and spotlight works on Win11 24H2. However, I can't get it to set to picture and get the error message "Failed to set Lock Screen image". Any idea how I can resolve it? I'm using a jpg as the background image.

Is there something special about your background image? How big is it (dimension and file size)? Have you tried other images?

Since you didn't get a "Failed to load image from [path]" error, the image was loaded from the filesystem. The script was written and tested on 24H2.

Here's another possibility. Although I suspect that @garlin suggestions are more likely to help.

The windows runtime api contains 2 methods for setting the users lock screen Windows.System.UserProfile Namespace - Windows apps . The second method (not used in @garlin script): UserProfilePersonalizationSettings.TrySetLockScreenImageAsync Method (Windows.System.UserProfile) - Windows apps contains a note:

When you set an image more than once, the new image file must have a different name than the previously set image. If you set a new image using a file with the same name as the previous image, it will fail.

storage file objects have a name and a path property, so I assume this refers to the name only. So, try a different name for your lock screen image.

The only instance where someone reported the script failing, they were trying to import a 40MB PNG file at 8K resolution.

WinRT API is doing the usual transcoding of the wallpaper to the cached image folder. So massive images may overwhelm it. There are techniques to bypass the transcoding (to prevent recompression artifacts), but you end up having to do some TrustedInstaller or takeown hacks to install your file.

garlin said:

Is there something special about your background image? How big is it (dimension and file size)? Have you tried other images?

Since you didn't get a "Failed to load image from [path]" error, the image was loaded from the filesystem. The script was written and tested on 24H2.

Click to expand...

So I test on PC and it work fine. The file size is 600K.

It failed due to some system corruption in his PC. So I re-intall Windows and the script works. Thanks for your help.