How To Put Different Background On Dual Monitor

Multiple Monitors Header

Setting a unique groundwork on each of your multiple monitors was a simple trick in Windows 8, and, for a while, the menu was buried in Windows ten. Luckily, it has been added back in a more logical location.

The Like shooting fish in a barrel Way: Gear up a Wallpaper in the Settings App

Since nosotros originally published this article, Microsoft added a meliorate solution to Windows 10. Here it is:

To change desktop backgrounds individually for each monitor, caput to Settings > Personalization > Background. Under Choose Your Picture show, correct-click a background image and select "Set For Monitor ane," "Set For Monitor ii," or whichever other monitor yous desire to use it on.

To add together additional images to this list, click "Scan" and select a wallpaper y'all want to utilize. Windows will set information technology as your default on all desktops. Right-click the wallpaper icons and cull which monitor you desire to use each on.

Setting different wallpapers for different monitors on Windows 10.

When to Use This Trick (and When to Use Tertiary Party Tools)

Update: Since Windows x has added an easy, effective fashion to change your desktop wallpaper, as we outlined in a higher place, information technology isn't necessary to apply either of the following methods to change your desktop wallpaper. You still can use the "Imperfect Method" if you want to, though.

First and foremost, we desire to brand the best utilize of your time — both in reading this tutorial and down the road when you're using our advice to mix upwards your wallpapers. With that in heed, consider the following two scenarios.

Scenario 1: You infrequently modify your desktop wallpaper, simply y'all would actually like to take a different background on each monitor. In this scenario, the solution in this article (which is quick and uses Windows' congenital-in setting) is a perfect one as it'southward light on system resource.

Scenario two: if you want to use multiple and different wallpapers on each of your monitors, and yous desire a high degree of control over that, and then the standard wallpaper options in Windows 10 probably won't cutting it. If you're a wallpaper junkie or actually demand fine-tooth control over the backgrounds, and so nosotros strongly recommend the venerable (and still quite useful) John's Groundwork Switcher (free) or the Swiss Army Knife of multimonitor management, DisplayFusion (the features relevant to wallpaper direction are available in the free version).

If you lot find yourself in scenario one, though, let's take a look at how to set a custom wallpaper on each monitor in Windows 10. (And if you're in a customize-all-the-things mood, be certain to check out how to customize your Windows 10 login and lock screen, too.)

RELATED: How to Change the Login Screen Groundwork on Windows 10

How to Select Unique Wallpapers for Dissimilar Monitors in Windows 10

There are ii means 2 become about selecting multiple monitor wallpapers in Windows x–neither particularly intuitive. For each method, we'll use a scattering ofGame of Thrones wallpapers to demonstrate. For frame of reference, here's what our current desktop looks like, with the default Windows 10 wallpaper repeated on each of our 3 monitors.

Three desktops from a triple monitor setup.

It's dainty wallpaper, equally far as stock wallpaper goes, but a tad boring. Let's mix it up.

The Easy but Imperfect Method: Change Your Wallpaper With the Windows File Explorer

The outset method isn't intuitive because it relies on you selecting the images in Windows' File Explorerand knowing how Windows will handle your multiple image selection. Select your images in the File Explorer, using Ctrl or Shift to select multiple images. Right-click on the prototype you wish to assign to your main monitor while the images you lot want to use are still selected.

Note: This is principal every bit in the monitor Windows thinks of as the primary monitor per the Settings > Organization > Display menu in the Control Panel, not necessarily the monitor you consider the primary/important i.

In the correct-click context card, select "Set equally desktop background".

Windows volition set up those images every bit your desktop wallpapers. Below, you can encounter that the image we clicked on (the red wallpaper with the House Lannister crest) is on the centre monitor. The 2 other wallpapers, for House Stark and Firm Baratheon, are more than or less randomly placed on the secondary and tertiary monitor.

Game of Thrones themed backgrounds randomly arranged on three desktops.

This is a particularly inelegant solution because you have no control over where the images on the non-principal monitors will be placed. It also has 2 other irritating shortcomings: if the images are not the exact resolution of your monitor, they won't piece of work, and they will randomly rotate positions every 30 minutes.

With those shortcomings in mind, know that nosotros've shown y'all this method entirely in the name of thoroughness and education and non because we retrieve you lot'll adopt information technology. Let's look at a much better method.

The Complicated simply Powerful Method: Alter Your Wallpaper With the Personalization Menu

Update: The command here no longer brings up the traditional Control Panel interface, but yous can now use the Settings > Personalization > Background window to accomplish the same thing.

When Windows 8 came out, one of the first things multi-monitor users noticed is that in that location were a bunch of new menu options, including a very like shooting fish in a barrel-to-employ multi-monitor wallpaper choice tool built correct into the Personalizations menu in the Control Console. Inexplicably, that selection vanished in Windows 10.

You won't find information technology in Settings > Personalization > Backgrounds where information technology used to be — there, yous tin only set a single image as your background regardless of how many monitors you accept. Farther, you lot won't find it where information technology used to reside in Windows 8, in Command Panel > Advent and Personalization > Personalization, where there used to exist a direct link to it. Strangely, even though no menus straight link to information technology anymore, the carte itself is just hanging out there waiting for you.

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

control /name Microsoft.Personalization /page pageWallpaper

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

The defunct Desktop Background Window in Control Panel.

If we click on the "Browse" button, we can browse to the folder with ourGame of Thrones wallpapers (or we can apply the dropdown carte du jour to navigate to existing wallpaper locations like the Windows Pictures library).

Once yous've loaded the directory you wish to work with, here's where you'll finally get the per-monitor command you've been looking for. Deselect the images (Windows automatically checks all of them when y'all load the directory) and so select a single image. Right-click on it and select the monitor y'all wish to assign it to (again, visit Settings > System > Display if you don't know which monitor is which number).

Echo the process for whatever wallpaper you lot wish to use for each monitor. The end result? Exactly the wallpaper we want on each monitor:

The Game of Thrones backgrounds arranged deliberately on a triple monitor setup.

If you want to farther mix things upwards, you can always select multiple images and then use the "Picture position" drop-downwards carte to make adjustments to how the paradigm is displayed and the "Change picture every" carte du jour to tweak how often the pick of photos yous accept are changed up.

You can have your desktop backgrounds automatically change between as many images as you want.

It's not the most sophisticated organisation in the world (come across some of the third-party options we highlighted in the introduction for more avant-garde features), but it gets the job done.

Despite the menu vanishing from the Control Console, a little command line-fu returns it, and yous can easily customize your wallpapers across multiple monitors to your heart's content.