I’ve often wondered about the standard screen saver photos promulgated by my operating systems. Who chose THOSE specific photos and why. Usually they are landscapes. Sometimes they are MOSTLY natural settings, but always with SOME indicator of human activity. Other times, they are of roads or villages.
Just the other day, my work computer running Windows started showing “holiday” themed screen savers. Yesterday a golden star, and today a stocking hung from a mantel. Just struck me as a curious choice, as not all Windows users likely celebrate xmas. This impressed me as a noticeable change from all prior screen savers.
Anyone have insight as to how the choices of screen savers are made and why?
In my company, the lock screens will often communicate a message that the company wants people to see, e.g. an announcement of some pending staff survey that you’re invited to participate in. In that case, I guess there’s a function in the IT department that rolls out these screens to everyone on the basis of what some other department wants to promote.
In the case of screensavers that just look pretty with no messages involved, I guess it’s some algorithm that selects the pictures on the basis of what people have liked before. On Windows, you can click a button to tell the OS whether you liked a particular image or not, and I suppose some companies leave that functionality in place so that the algorithm can select pictures similar to those that people have liked in the past.
Just for the record, because this is FQ and the Dope: what we’re talking about here are not screensavers, but background images, either on the lock screen or the desktop. Screensavers were animated to prevent burnt-in images on CRT monitors. Flat screens have made them obsolete.
There actually still are screensavers too. Both Apple TV and Google TV have curated sets you can choose from, usually with nondescript landscapes and cityscapes. They’re nice and I do wonder where they come from (like is there a program for photographers to submit their work?)
But they’re only decorative, or do they still serve a technical purpose? As far as I remember, there isn’t even a built-in screensaver function in Windows 10/11 anymore.
My Windows 10 goes to a screensaver. Not sure why or how it got set like that (I’m sure I set it), but it does. The computers serves as my TV and my media server so it never gets turned off. So I guess if you don’t use the power saving features of the OS, you get a screen saver.
Mine is bubbles bouncing around and many a nights I’ve sat on the couch and watched it after turning off all videos but still willing myself to go to bed.
There definitely is. Although mine is set to just be blank after while, then later to power off the monitor.
At many companies I’ve been to the screen saver is the MS-Windows default. Since I know this by heart that means I can tell which OS version they are running. One HMO was running XP for far, far longer than they should have.
Strange, I wasn’t so sure anymore and just went to display settings on my Win 11 laptop, but couldn’t find anything for screensavers.
ETA: ah, just did a more thorough search, and the screensaver settings are now under power management settings. They used to be under display settings up until Win 7 (I don’t know about Win 8, I skipped it).
Mostly decorative, I think, except in some edge cases (like some OLEDs can still burn in and cause ghosting, especially for prolonged display of the same pixels, like playing the same game for many weeks on end or a taskbar that never changes).
Current Windows background images (desktop, login screen) often have a ‘click here for more about this photo’ available is an inconspicuous corner.
I’ve worked with some embedded devices that could display configurable splashscreens and background images. These would be things like the little display on a printer or the Welcome screen briefly shown when you boot a camera or computer monitor. They alway need to be very particular size (like 200×100 pixels), pallette, and usually a bitmap. Way more of a pain than useful but neat.
Thanks for the proper terminology. I am so ignorant, not only as to how my computer works, but the proper terms as well.
When I go into settings in Windows 11, it looks different from what you show. They do list “backgrounds” under “personalization,” but those do not seem to be the “backgrounds” I see. I have seen the blue swirl, but most often I see th elandscapes. No idea why they change.
A cow-orker showed me that at work, but I do not have it on my desktop.
I am strictly instructed to not do ANYTHING non-work on m work computer, so I don’t think any of these result from my search history. Really strikes me as odd that they would promulgate clear x-mas backgrounds to the entire universe of users.
OK - so I must have clicked on something under personalization, b/c first I had sunrises, and I changed it so now I have some kind of a pier. I have the “learn about” icon in the top right, and it says the pic is from Greece. Fine. I don’t care if it shows an image or no image.
But here is the part that confuses me - I can’t figure out how to get back to the xmas images I saw before. It gives me 6 options (or solid colors) - none of which are the landscapes or holiday images I saw before. So where did they come from, and why can’t I get them back?
And I still wonder who decides that this specific image - a pier in Greece - is what they want uses to see. (Actually, it is a crappy background, as it is quite busy and makes the icons harder to see.)
So you think they downloaded some different ones during the 15 minutes between when I was signed in at the office and then signed in again from home? Seems odd that the holiday ones just started a couple of days ago, but they would remove them with xmas still 2 weeks off.
This is a really stupid matter, but it kinda contributes to my difficulty with so much tech because it just doesn’t make sense to me, and is so hard to get a clear answer to. If something as basic as the background image just appears/disappears with me doing nothing, it makes me disinclined to thik I can understand or master much of ANYTHING.
Sure, an over-reaction. But I SO STRONGLY prefer things I can touch - or at least understand.
First, it makes a difference if you login into different machines at work and at home, or if you login at home into your work computer via VPN or other means. In the first case, different background pictures are to be expected because both machines have different setups. If it’s the same computer, it’s also not surprising, because Windows refreshes those backgrounds regularly (but please don’t ask me in what intervals or after which other logic).
I think the unsatisfying answer is that yes, Windows and other operating systems do download dynamic backgrounds (whether a screen saver or lock screen; it depends). Sometimes you can find old images just by searching for them. Were they one of these? Bing Gallery - Bing HD Wallpapers
Microsoft (and most consumer tech companies) don’t really value stability. “Innovation” is what drives profits for them.
Windows didn’t always use to have dynamic wallpapers, but probably some small team or intern there thought it’d be a good idea and it got pushed through and they probably got a small raise for it. Maybe some people like the changing ones. Maybe it helps Microsoft sell their Bing stuff. Who knows
Those businesses aren’t run as user-entered design outfits. They’re huge unwieldy bureauracies with internal politics and inter team competition and differing priorities. Most of them aren’t thinking about you but about their own resumes and careers.
One thing’s for sure… Microsoft doesn’t care about you. Once you buy a Windows machine, you’re just an advertisement target, a potential security risk, possibly a support cost, etc. They’re going to do everything they can to keep you connected to the internet and on the latest Windows updates and AI crapware and keep giving you new useless shit because that’s how they slow your computer down over time and make you upgrade again. Honestly most of us would probably be fine if we all just stuck with Windows 7 computers. But then they wouldn’t be able to make their billions.
Mine sometimes serve a SALES purpose: the little bits of text over the photos that people have mentioned, when clicked on, tell you how great Bing (or some other Microsoft product) is.
I have been doing this for YEARS with no result whatsoever. Specifically, I click ‘like’ only for pictures of structures (buildings, bridges, etc.)–never for nature scenes. It’s not that I hate nature, it’s that I’ve been wondering for years if this feature works. And it doesn’t: I still get photos of structures two or three times a year, and the rest of the time I get nature shots
No big deal; I just find it odd that Microsoft asks. They must be using the information for some reason other than finding out what people like. (It’s not like I get ads for architecture books once I get logged on, or anything.)
