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 (acting as director) and Marylee Johnson (acting as executive producer) were responsible for the production of Windows 10's wallpaper sets. They commissioned former National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry to take photos at New Zealand, and Chad Copeland to take photos around the world. Along with the new wallpapers, the Flowers theme from its predecessor would be reused in the final release of Windows 10. 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. A version of this wallpaper was included in Windows 10 S, a feature-limited edition of Windows 10 designed primarily for low-end devices in the education market, which only allows the installation of apps from Microsoft Store; system settings are locked to only allow Microsoft Edge as the default web browser with Bing as its search engine. With Windows 10 version 1803, Windows 10 S became a mode (called "S mode") available in Home, Pro, and Pro Education editions. Starting with Windows 10 version 1903, it was replaced with a more simplified version that features a bright blue background. An alternative variant of the simplified wallpaper was later included in the Windows 365 service as the default wallpaper for virtual machines that run on the aforementioned operating system.

These wallpapers also appear in Windows Server 2016 through Windows Server 2022, as they share the same wallpaper set from their client counterparts.

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

 * This list only includes the built-in wallpaper set, and does not feature images served through the online Windows Spotlight service.

McCurry and Copeland were also involved in the creation of the lock screen wallpapers (excluding the final image, as it simply consists of a shade of blue). img100 is the only image at 3840x2160 instead of 1920x1200. They were later replaced with a set of CGI images from Windows 11.

The wallpaper set also appears in the Windows Server family from 2016 through 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.

Sign-in background
The sign-in screen Windows 10 versions 1507 and 1511 feature a darker version of the default desktop wallpaper as the background. This was removed in version 1607, and the sign-in screen background now matches the lock screen background instead.

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.