Question Setting a lock screen slideshow in Win11 was somewhat more difficult than expected. Try it for me please?

[mikeymikec]

On the Windows install of my desktop PC, I have a bunch of images that I've liberated from the lock screen Spotlight service for several years, and since I switched off Spotlight (to get rid of the annoying extras on the lock screen), I got bored with one of the stock image. The liberated images were on my desktop but the feature has a problem with that location so I moved it onto the second drive, however no matter what folder I point it at, the file picker UI reckons there aren't any images in that folder, and if I select it anyway, Windows says that I have to use a folder with at least one image in.

Apparently this is quite a common problem with many sites suggesting possible workarounds, and I've tried most of the suggestions I've encountered, but still nothing. I also tried to set it up on a brand new clean install of 23H2 and it does the same thing.

I'd be curious to know whether people here have similar issues.

 

[Dr_Web]

Make sure the folder is indexed Control Panel, Indexing Options, add that drive/folder. Sometimes the file picker won’t see images if indexing is disabled.
Copy one of the images into a brand new folder on that same drive and point Windows to that folder often forces it to refresh.
Check that the files actually have .jpg/.png extensions; Spotlight grabs sometimes end up without proper extensions and Windows won’t detect them.
If all else fails, try symlinking that folder into your Pictures directory mklink /D "C:\Users\YourUser\Pictures\Spotlight "D:\Spotlight". Then point Windows to the Pictures\Spotlight folder.
It’s definitely a long-standing quirk, but usually one of the above gets around it.