A Little Neat Trick to Grab Windows 10 Startup Desktop Screen Pictures

Introduction

Windows 10 PCs startup screen is beautiful. Those were shot by pros and picked by pros. Is it really worth saving them somewhere? You bet!

Background

Here are some Windows 10 startups:

Before you use the code, you should know these things:

1. All those photo assets are here:

   C:\Users\simon\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets

   NOTE: You should replace simon with your local user name

2. Windows 10 will automatically/silently/quietly update those photos on a daily basis (depending on your Internet connection)
3. Those files have weird names and have no extensions. Something like this:

   

4. The truth is, they are all JPEG files. 

Updated: according to commenter (E Anderson), there are other file formats other than JPGs. In my tests, I haven't seen any other formats, because all those weird-named-files in my asset folder can be converted to JPGs and I can view all of them no problem. But still, his claim might be the case in different PCs. Plus, the main purpose of this trick is to capture the beautiful startup screen, and JPG works for this purpose, so it's up to you smart readers' decision to perfect the script further or not. 

Using the Code

Here are the little trick steps:

1. Create 2 temp folders like this:
   • C:\temp\pics
   • C:\temp\pics\101
2. Create an old school DOS command batch file:

   C:\temp\pics\AutoPic.bat

   Only 3 lines of "code" here:

   del C:\temp\pics\101\*.* /Q
   copy C:\Users\simon\AppData\Local\Packages\
   Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets\*.* C:\temp\pics\101
   Ren C:\temp\pics\101\*.* *.jpg 

   All it does is to clean the last batch, dump this batch and rename results to *.jpg, that's it!

   NOTE: Don't forget to change "simon" with your user name (If you don't know how to do it, please ask your buddy, not me...)

Also update: You can also use %UserProfile% to replace "simon" for generic purpose. Thanks Jackson Savitraz for the tip (I actually should have known it myself. Again, thanks)

3. Now, just double click (or right click to run as local admin) AutoPic.bat, after 2 seconds, you should get results similar to this:

You can open these JPEGs with any photo viewer you prefer. Of course, you can rename/save them whichever, wherever fitting your needs and interests.

Please respect copyrights as well, just a reminder...

Points of Interest

If you really like to save beautiful photos, you probably want to do this frequently (twice a week maybe). Because those photos are updated by Windows 10 quite often.

Again, this tip is only for Windows 10 PC. Specifically, tested under this version on my PC and some other PCs I can mess up with ;-)

If in the future, Windows 10 changes its behaviour, we probably have to update our script. But the basic idea is there...

Enjoy and hope this helps!