If you're like me you spend a lot of time staring at your computer screen. And you probably like to customize it. One thing we like to do is add our own background picture. But in my case, even that needs a changing every now and then. You can do it manually or let windows do it for you through a background slide show. Most of my backgrounds are Not Safe For Work, so I can't show them to you :-) but here's how to set up a slideshow to automatically change your backgrounds in both Windows 10 and 7.
Before hand, always optional, gather all the pics you want to use as backgrounds and place them in a folder by themselves somewhere on your hard drive.
They both start out the same, right click on your desktop or current background and choose Personalize from the menu.
With Windows 10 you'll immediately be on the Background options. If you haven't changed your background before you could just use the browse button find a picture and set it has that. But I want a slideshow. You'll see a graphic representing your current setup with the heading Background.
Under that is a button you can click on, it's probably set to picture, click on it and then click on Slideshow.
Under that is the option Choose albums for your slideshow, translated, choose your folder with your pictures in. Click on the Browse button and find your picture folder on your hard drive.
Once done go to the option Change picture every, this is how long the picture stays on the background before it changes, Your choice 1 minute, 10 minutes, etc. I have mine on 1. Windows 7 gives you a lot more options in this section.
Shuffle. I'm only assuming here because I don't know for sure, if Shuffle is off Windows will just show the pics in order, alphabetical I think, and with shuffle on it will pick photos more at random.
Finally Choose a fit. If you got pictures that are portrait or taller than they are wide, and stretch them out over a monitor that is landscape, wider than it's tall, your stretched out pictures can look really weird. So you might have to experiment with Fill, Fit, Stretch, Tile, Center, Span. I choose Stretch in my case and got a little bonus that I did not expect. I have a dual monitor setup and I get a different background slideshow on each monitor.
Windows 7
With Windows 7 the procedures are similar but the layout is quite different. Again right click on desktop. Go to personalize. In the window that opens down towards the bottom , click on Desktop Background.
Across the top of the next window use the Browse button to find your picture folder. It will then show you all the pictures in that folder. You'll notice that there are little check marks in the top left hand corner of each picture thumbnail. You can uncheck or check any pictures that you don't want in your slideshow.
Towards the bottom you'll have some of the same options as Windows 10 like, Picture position: to Stretch, Fill, Fit, Tile, Center. Note: with Windows 7 if you have a dual monitor setup, the same picture will appear on both monitors.
Then there is the option to Change picture every:, here Windows 7 beats Windows 10 by giving you more options; 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 3minutes, 5 minutes, etc. And of course Shuffle which I assume works the same way. Also with Windows 7 you have to Save changes so click that button.
One more bonus I should mention if you get tired looking at the background you're on just right click on your desktop and click on Next desktop background. This works both both versions of Windows.