Windows 10

For pre-release wallpapers and pictures, see Windows 10 Technical Preview.

Windows 10 is an operating system released by Microsoft in 2015. It is the successor to 8.1. Unlike previous versions of Windows, builds are released very frequently and major updates are provided at no cost.

Wallpapers
Chris Raykovich served as the director of 10's wallpapers, while Marylee Johnson served as the executive producer. They decided to hire former National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry to take photos in New Zealand to be used for 10's wallpaper set. They also hired Chad Copeland to take a few photos at Australia and Hawaii. Along with the new wallpapers, the Flowers theme from 8 would be reused yet again. McCurry and Copeland also took several shots that did not make it into the final release, which are present on Raykovich and Johnson's websites.

The default wallpaper was created by a team led by graphic designer Bradley G. Munkowitz. It is included at many different resolutions as low as 1024x768 and as high as 3840x2160. Starting with Windows 10 version 1903, it was replaced with a more simplified version. An alternative variant of the simplified wallpaper was later included in the Windows 365 service as the default wallpaper for all virtual machines.

These wallpapers also appear in Windows Server 2016, Server 2019, and Server 2022, except that Windows Server 2016 and Server 2019 features the same default wallpaper as Windows 10 versions 1507 to 1809 and Windows Server 2022 features the same default wallpaper as Windows 10 versions 1903 to present.

Team
The Team edition of 10 contains an entirely different set of wallpapers, all at 3840x2160 as opposed to 1920x1200 in order to accommodate for the screen resolution of the Microsoft Surface Hub. They are split into two folders: Cat01 and Cat02. At least three of the images present in this set are alternative versions of lock screen wallpapers present in other editions of Windows 10. Most of the wallpapers present in this set are in PNG format, resulting in large file sizes.

Windows 10X
Windows 10X is a version that was originally supposed to arrive alongside new dual-screen devices like the Surface Neo. It was announced in October 2019, then delayed in April 2020, and canceled in May 2021; many of its features will be rolled into Windows 11. It has a very small selection of wallpapers in inconsistent resolutions, and it is very likely this was not intended to be the final set. Beach was taken from the free photo site Unsplash, rather than being licensed from a stock photo site or taken by an employee/hired photographer, so this was likely a placeholder.

Lock screen wallpapers
McCurry and Copeland were also involved with taking the lock screen wallpapers, except for the last one which is just a single color. This list only includes built-in ones, due to the sheer volume of Spotlight ones.

These wallpapers also appears in Windows Server 2016, Server 2019, and Server 2022.

Team
The Team SKU features a set of lock screen wallpapers that mainly consist of environmental shots. At least three of the images present in this set are alternative versions of lock screen wallpapers present in other editions of Windows 10.

Versions 1507 and 1511
Like in Windows Vista and 7, Windows 10 versions 1507 and 1511 feature a graphical logon background which is a modified version of the default desktop wallpaper.

Versions 1607 onwards
By version 1607, the logon screen background now matches the lock screen background.

User account pictures
Like with Windows 8 and 8.1, 10 has only 2 identical user account pictures 一 guest and user 一 used for default accounts and guest account respectively, even though it is impossible to create a guest profile without command prompt and local policy editing since very early Windows 10 builds[exact build?]. Starting with Windows 10 version 2004, both pictures were altered to fit the light theme, which is now used by default.

Both pictures, just like in 8 and 8.1, have a resolution of 448x448px. Also included are PNG versions of both of the pictures and resized versions of the user picture, which are used by UWP apps.

Picture Password
You can see this image in the Picture Password setup tutorial when setting it for the first time:

Setup background
The setup background called background_cli.bmp used by Windows 10 Setup. It was reused from Windows 8. It can be found in the  folder inside of Windows 10 ISO. The background itself consists of simply, the default Windows 8 accent color. The same picture used in Windows 8 and 8.1.