Windows 10: Setting different Backgrounds for Dual Monitors in Windows 10

Hi All,
If you have a dual monitors and want to set a different background for each. You don't need third party program to set them. Here's an easy way:

• Copy the background images to: C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Windows
  
  
  
  
• Use CTRL key for multiple selection to select both backgrounds.
• Right click on one background->Set as desktop background

You should have a separate background for each monitor.

The background images will be stored under:
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes
as:
Transcoded_000 and Transcoded_001 without extension

If you want to swap the images, just rename 0 to 1, 1 to 0. Sign out and sign back in or
right click on desktop and select: Next desktop background





Here's an example:





:)

 

Support For Different Backgrounds on Dual Monitors

Hello,

I have seen posts from a couple years ago with solutions that don't work on this topic, so I am re-posting this in the hopes that this is a suggestion that would benefit other Windows 10 Users besides me.

My PC has Windows 10 and because I like to bounce back and forth between things, I have dual monitors attached to my PC. This is all fine and dandy, except for one tiny Customization option that is missing - I wish I had the support to have differing backgrounds.
In my particular case, I would like my Monitor 1 to have a picture/slideshow of a household pet or family pictures whereas I would like my Monitor 2 to have personal motivational quotes that I could change by pretty-fying (dunno if that's even a real word)
the quote using the Paint program.

• Am I alone in thinking this would be a good feature for Microsoft to add in a future update?
  
• What kind of different background options would you want to have on Windows 10?
• Is there a way to do this that is easy enough for a non-programming casual PC gamer to understand and implement?
• I bring this up only because I have seen some "Magic Fix" on a post from 2015 that I tried involving using the Windows Run
• And it didn't work at all. Just took me back to the Background page under Settings -> Personalization

 

Dual Display Backgrounds in Windows 10

Hi David,

Thank you for being a part of Windows 10.

I would suggest you to try the following steps.

a. Right click on the Empty screen.

b. Click on Display settings.

c. The process of setting up different wallpaper on a Windows 10 computer requires that the second monitor must be enabled in extended mode. Once you have dual or multiple monitors running in Extended Mode, you can set different wallpaper for different monitors
on c computer running Windows 10.

d. Makeup your mind as to which wallpaper you wish to have on your second monitor and open Personalization’s Desktop Background tab and right click on the desired wallpaper to be set as background for the second monitor.

Note: When you right on the desktop background you will get an option to select the monitor to set the desktop background.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other issues with Windows in future.

 

Good stuff, thanks for sharing.

 

You are welcome. In addition, you can save it as a theme:

 

I saw someone point to this article: I figured I'd point out that you can also just directly use the old UI. Go to the Run or a CMD prompt and enter:
control /name Microsoft.Personalization /page pageWallpaper

That'll take you to the old Background control panel which has this UI. Looks like they haven't added it to the new Settings page yet. :\

 

Thanks for the tip. I made a shortcut with that and it worked perfectly.

 

Why doesn't this work for me? I CTRL selected 2 wallpapers but it it applies whichever I right-clicked on as the default wallpaper. Going into %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Theme, I see only one file named TranscodedWallpaper?

 

Nanodice: does using the control panel method I mentioned work for me? Seems like an easier route. *Smile

 

Nope..It shows two wallpapers but it still sets the same one wallpaper for both screens..

 

I fixed it by selecting three pictures and then just clicking next until I got the combination I wanted!

 

I tried this with my 3 monitor system and it wasn't pretty. The screens on the monitors kept jumping back and forth and wouldn't stabilize long enough for me to navigate thru file manager back to where I had stored the pictures I was using. Finally I was able to stop it under the personalization screen and go from there and delete the pictures it was having trouble with. I'm not sure if it was just the method I used (or misused) that caused the problem or because I have one of my monitors connected to my internal graphics. I used a 3rd party program that worked just fine on this same system using Windows 7. Bottom line, I think before I try too much customization on this machine, I'll wait for some of the drivers to mature a bit.

 

Just press Windows + R keys to bring up then type or paste in the following:

• control /name Microsoft.Personalization /page pageWallpaper

the "Desktop Background" setting will appear. From there, just right-click an image and choose which monitor you'd like it to display to.

 

Nice one, thanks.

I'm getting through that tiresome phase of having to add a new program to Windows every time I want to make a tiny change to my computer.

 

Not sure what happens but when I try anything it sends my monitors into this bizarre loop. I had to reboot to get it to stop. My background is fine for now. I think I'll wait a bit longer before I start messing. No use tempting fate at this point.