Windows 11 – Spotlight will not work on Lock screen
Hi,
Problem
Windows Spotlight will not work on Lock screen – Just a black screen is displayed.
Build Info and Background
Our desktop PC is a 64-bit PC running Windows 11 Home vsn 23H2 OS Build 22631.3235 and all the latest drivers are installed.
Our Desktop PC is functioning normally.
We have 2 Admin accounts configured.
Windows Spotlight works perfectly on Lock screen of only 1 or the 2 accounts.
Windows Spotlight work perfectly as the wallpaper on both accounts.
Things I’ve Tried
I have done an in-place upgrade of Windows 11 which fixed the problem for a few hours and then the lock screen went black again.
For the account with the spotlight lock screen issue…
It doesn’t matter if the “Show the lock screen background picture on the Sign-in screen” is ON or OFF.
I can change the background to a default picture, or specify a personal photo, and it works perfectly.
If I set the Lock screen to a slideshow it just displays the default picture I previously selected.
From the Command Prompt (with Admin Privileges) I have run DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth and it said “The operation completed successfully.” But Spotlight on the lock screen still didn’t work.
Hi Nathan, thanks for reaching out.
Click Start – Settings – Network and Internet– Advanced Network Settings, in more Settings, you can see the option “Network reset“, click it, select “Reset now“.
Windows Spotlight Push wallpaper cache files do have a default path to save:
C:\Users\your name\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets
When you open this path, you should see something like this:
In this screenshot from my own laptop, you’ll notice that the latest wallpaper push was at 9:19 am on March 11th.
You can check whether there are corresponding files in this path, and you can confirm the generation time.
In addition, these screenshots have another use, that is, if you want to save these wallpaper separately, copy these cache files to another path, and then change the file suffix to.jpg to save the common image format.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask, we’re here to help you further if needed.
Your VAF Team.
