Personalize the Desktop

Quick reference

• 00:04 We can live in our pack copy of Windows 11 by personalizing the desktop.
• 00:09 And when I say personalizing the desktop,
• 00:11 I mean we can change the background wallpaper that we're using,
• 00:15 we can change the theme, and we can also change the colors.
• 00:19 So let's have a look at some of the options that we have.
• 00:22 Now I mentioned at the beginning of the course that when you upgrade
• 00:27 to Windows 11, it comes with some really nice Free HD backgrounds.
• 00:31 And you can see that I'm using one of those free backgrounds on my desktop.
• 00:36 Now we do have a small selection of built in images that we can use,
• 00:40 or we can use our own image.
• 00:43 So let's take a look at some of the options we have when it comes to
• 00:46 personalization.
• 00:48 Now the quickest way to get into the correct area to do this is to simply right
• 00:52 click on the desktop background.
• 00:55 And notice right at the bottom we have an option for personalize.
• 00:58 Now all this is going to do is basically open up settings,
• 01:01 but it's going to jump us across to exactly the correct place.
• 01:06 And you can see right at the top the background wallpaper that I'm
• 01:09 currently using.
• 01:11 Next to it we have different themes.
• 01:14 Now there is a difference between simply a background wallpaper and a theme.
• 01:19 A theme contains more than one thing, so if I was to select one of these themes not
• 01:24 only is it going to apply the background wallpaper that you can see here, but
• 01:29 it's also going to set a color scheme for Windows 11.
• 01:32 So you can see here we have a slightly greeny color scheme, slightly gray and
• 01:37 some of these will use a light or a dark overall theme.
• 01:41 So choosing one of these basically sets our background wallpaper and
• 01:45 the colors and accents that we're using.
• 01:48 Now if you want to customize each individual element i.e you want to upload
• 01:52 your own image to use for the background,
• 01:55 you want to set your own colors you can then use these options below to do that.
• 02:00 Now we are going to choose one of these themes in a moment, but
• 02:03 let me just show you the individual items first of all.
• 02:06 The first thing here is Background.
• 02:09 So, this is where we can personalize our background wallpaper and
• 02:12 you can see some of the images that are available in Windows 11.
• 02:16 And some of these are really nice, I have this first one selected but if we choose
• 02:22 maybe this one just here and then I'm just going to minimize this a little bit.
• 02:28 You can kind of see what that looks like.
• 02:30 So these are definitely very nice to use as your background wallpapers.
• 02:35 Now notice here, I have picture selected.
• 02:38 We have a few different other options in here, but
• 02:41 we're going to leave on picture for the time being because if we don't want to
• 02:44 use one of the in-built backgrounds, we can upload our own picture.
• 02:48 So maybe you want to have a picture of your children or
• 02:51 maybe a holiday destination you recently visited or maybe your pet.
• 02:57 Well, if we want to do that we can choose our own photo in the section below.
• 03:01 Now I have a dog that I've had for
• 03:03 about 18 months now that I'm absolutely obsessed with.
• 03:07 And so in general I like to have her picture on my phone and
• 03:11 all of my devices because she is my baby.
• 03:13 So what I can do is I can click on Browse photos and
• 03:17 then as long as I have a photo saved off I can use that as my background.
• 03:22 So I'm going to go down to my downloads folder and
• 03:24 there she is, I'm going to use this one just here.
• 03:28 Let's choose the picture, you can see it adds it to recent images and
• 03:33 then I can choose a fill of my desktop.
• 03:36 So currently it's set to fill, but we do have a few other options.
• 03:40 Now in order for you to see this correctly again I'm just going to minimize this and
• 03:44 I'm actually going to drag the corners of this window in to make it a lot smaller.
• 03:48 So you can see here there she is my lovely dog Tilly and
• 03:51 currently that image is filling the entire desktop because I have it set to fill.
• 03:57 But if I choose Fit, it's going to fit the image to the desktop.
• 04:02 And when we choose Fit, I can see the whole image as it was originally
• 04:06 without it being zoomed in to fill the entire desktop or
• 04:10 having anything cut off of the image.
• 04:13 And you will find that depending on what image you're using sometimes depending
• 04:17 on the size of the image, if you've got it filling the entire desktop it might appear
• 04:22 a bit blurred or distorted.
• 04:23 So it's always good to have a little play around with these different options so
• 04:26 you get it just correct.
• 04:27 So if I choose stretch it's going to stretch it out that looks very distorted,
• 04:31 I can tile it now because this image is so
• 04:33 large you can just see the end of the first picture here.
• 04:37 And it's just going to repeat that picture in a tile formation.
• 04:40 If the image was smaller,
• 04:42 it would look a lot more like a wall full of different tiles.
• 04:45 We have Center, so that's going to center the image,
• 04:48 this option kind of cuts off part of the image which isn't so great and
• 04:53 then we have span which zooms in very slightly.
• 04:55 Now if I go back to Fill I actually think that one looks pretty good.
• 05:00 So what I'm trying to say here is if you do use your own image, have a little play
• 05:04 around with some of these fit options so that your image isn't distorted,
• 05:08 because that can look pretty hideous depending on the image.
• 05:12 So those are the options we have when it comes to choosing a picture, but
• 05:16 we do have some other options in here.
• 05:18 Maybe you're quite the minimalist and
• 05:20 you would rather just have a solid color in the background.
• 05:22 So I can choose a color from the palette or
• 05:25 I can choose a customized color in the view colors menu.
• 05:28 So let's choose let's go for it OrCAD if I select this is just going to give me
• 05:33 a solid fill color in the background and
• 05:36 some people prefer that they find it less distracting.
• 05:40 We can also use a slideshow option and what this basically allows us to do is
• 05:45 select a file folder that contains a number of different images and
• 05:49 the image will cycle around in a slideshow.
• 05:52 Let's just pull this up and go back to let's go to this PC and
• 05:58 Pictures maybe I have a folder in here let's very quickly create
• 06:04 one called Tilly and then I fill this folder with 10 images of my dog.
• 06:10 What I could do in slideshow view is I can click Browse,
• 06:15 I can then choose the folder, say choose this folder.
• 06:20 And then it's going to cycle through and change the background every so often.
• 06:25 And you can see here it says change picture every 30 minutes.
• 06:29 So it will cycle through all of those images and I can modify how often
• 06:32 the image changes, so I could have it changing every minute if I wanted to.
• 06:37 I have other settings in here like shuffled picture order,
• 06:40 let the slideshow run even if on battery power things like that.
• 06:44 So that is your slideshow option.
• 06:46 And then finally we have a pretty cool one called Windows spotlight and what this
• 06:51 will do is that a new image will be sent to you by Microsoft every single day.
• 06:56 So your background image will change according to whatever image Microsoft
• 07:00 has chosen to send out that day, so you can see what we currently have today.
• 07:05 If I log into my PC tomorrow,
• 07:06 it's going to be something completely different.
• 07:09 So if you're somebody who likes variety, that can be quite a nice option as well.
• 07:13 So that is our background.
• 07:15 If we go back to personalization, there's also some other things we can customize.
• 07:19 For example, colors, we can choose an overall mode so
• 07:22 currently I have light mode selected, but if I choose dark mode it means that all
• 07:27 of my windows are going to change this dark color as opposed to light.
• 07:31 We can also adjust our transparency effects.
• 07:35 So, if you take a look at the taskbar you can see the mine is a little
• 07:39 bit transparent,
• 07:40 if I was to toggle this off it's going to be more of a solid fill color.
• 07:44 We can then choose that accent colors and
• 07:46 accent colors are little flashes of color that appear throughout windows 11.
• 07:51 And a good example would be again down in the taskbar.
• 07:55 Notice that underneath the Settings icon, for example, we have a little line.
• 07:59 And in general, you'll see a line under your taskbar icons when you have that
• 08:04 application open, that little line is an accent color.
• 08:08 So I can change the color by selecting anything from this palette.
• 08:11 So if I change it to pink.
• 08:13 Notice the line underneath the Settings icon has now changed to pink.
• 08:17 Now let's jump back to personalization and just finish off by talking about themes.
• 08:22 As I said,
• 08:23 a theme will apply a background accent colors transparencies all in one go.
• 08:28 So if I choose this one just here,
• 08:30 you can now see it's changed my accent colors to this kind of brown color.
• 08:35 This one uses the light theme, so we haven't had much of a change there.
• 08:39 But if I minimize back down you can see my background has also been changed.

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