How to set separate wallpapers for dual monitors in Windows

While Windows 10 has a handy multi-monitor taskbar and support for multiple virtual desktops, it falls short in terms of allowing you to select different, distinct backgrounds for each of your displays. Setting a different wallpaper for each of your numerous displays was an easy hack in Windows 10. Fortunately, it has been moved back to a more reasonable position.

The Easy Way: Set a Wallpaper in the Settings

Since we first published this piece, Microsoft has offered a better solution to Windows 10. This is it:

To change the desktop backdrops for each monitor, go to Settings > Personalization > Background. Under Choose Your Picture, right-click a backdrop picture and select "Set For Monitor 1," "Set For Monitor 2," or the monitor you wish to use it on.

To add more photos to this list, click "Browse" and choose a wallpaper to use. Windows will set it as the default on all desktops. Right-click each wallpaper icon and select the monitor you wish to use it on.

When can you use Settings to set separate wallpaper on dual monitors?

As we said above, Windows 10 has provided a simple, effective way to change your desktop wallpaper, so you don't need to use any of the following techniques. However, you can still utilize the "Imperfect Method" if you like.

Scenario one: You seldom change your desktop wallpaper, but you'd want to have a distinct backdrop for each display. In this case, the method in this article (which is simple and leverages Windows' built-in option) is ideal because it requires few system resources.

Scenario two: if you want to utilize various backgrounds on each of your displays and have a high level of control over them, Windows 10's conventional wallpaper settings are unlikely to suffice.

If you find yourself in scenario one, here's how to create a custom wallpaper on each display in Windows 10.

How to choose different wallpapers for different monitors in traditional way

There are two ways to pick multiple monitor backgrounds in Windows 10, neither of which is especially obvious. We'll show each way using several Game of Thrones wallpapers. For reference, here's our current desktop, with the default Windows 10 wallpaper duplicated on each of our three monitors.

It's excellent wallpaper, as far as standard wallpaper goes, but a little dull. Let's spice things up.

1. Change Your Wallpaper With the Windows File Explorer

Change Your Wallpaper Using Windows File Explorer The first technique is less straightforward since it requires you to choose the photos in Windows File Explorer and understand how Windows will process your multiple image selections. Choose your photographs in File Explorer, using Ctrl or Shift to choose multiple images. Right-click on the image you want to set to your primary display while the other photos are still chosen.

This is main in the sense that it is the monitor that Windows considers to be the primary monitor, as shown by the Settings > System > Display menu in the Control Panel, rather than the monitor that you regard to be major/important.

Select "Set as desktop background" from the right-click context menu. Windows will set the photographs as your desktop backgrounds. The picture we clicked on (the crimson wallpaper with the House Lannister crest) is shown on the middle monitor. The two remaining wallpapers, for House Stark and House Baratheon, are arranged at random on the secondary and tertiary monitors.

This is an especially inelegant method since you have no control over where the images on the non-primary displays will be shown. It also has two annoying flaws: if the pictures are not the same resolution as your display, they will not operate, and they will rotate positions randomly every 30 minutes.

With those drawbacks in mind, keep in mind that we showed you this way just for the sake of thoroughness and education, not because we believe you would prefer it. Let us look at a much better way.

2. Change Your Wallpaper With the Personalization Menu

When Windows 8 was released, one of the first things multi-monitor users noticed was a slew of new menu choices, including a simple multi-monitor wallpaper selection tool integrated directly into the Control Panel's Personalizations menu.

Inexplicably, the option disappeared in Windows 10. It is no longer available in Settings > Personalization > Backgrounds, where you could previously choose a single image as your backdrop regardless of how many displays you have. Furthermore, it is no longer located under Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Personalization, where it was previously accessible via a direct link in Windows 8.

To access it, press Windows+R on your keyboard to call up the Run dialog box and enter the following text:

control /name Microsoft.Personalization /page pageWallpaper

Press Enter and, by the power of command-line tricks, you'll see the old wallpaper selection menu.

If we select the "Browse" option, we can navigate to the folder containing our Game of Thrones wallpapers, or we can utilize the dropdown menu to access existing wallpaper destinations such as the Windows Pictures collection.

Once you've loaded the directory you want to work in, you'll finally have the per-monitor control you've been seeking. Select the images, Windows will check them all when you open the directory, and then choose a single image. Right-click on it and pick the monitor you want to attach it to.

Repeat the process for whatever wallpaper you wish to use for each monitor. The result? Exactly the wallpaper we want on each monitor.

If you want to add more variety, you can always choose numerous photographs and then use the "Picture position" drop-down menu to modify how the image is presented, as well as the "Change picture every" choice to control how frequently the photos in your collection are updated.