Windows Spotlight Not Working
Windows Spotlight Not Working

Though as a browser Windows is quite popular it has a lot of issues. One such is the disruption of the Windows Spotlight feature. But before getting into the issue of windows spotlight stuck on one picture, it’s important to know a bit about this useful feature.

Windows Spotlight feature helps the users to retrieve photos from Bing and aids in setting the same as the background image of Windows 10 automatically.

In order to set the Windows Spotlight, the following steps must be followed:

  • Open the app setting
  • Click on Personalization
  • Select Lock Screen on the right side
  • Click on Windows Spotlight by making use of the Background Spotlight

However, this feature only works on Windows 10 when there is a strong internet connection. In the lack of an effective internet connection, the feature fails to download the new image as the Lock Screen picture.

  • Open the app setting
  • Click on Personalization
  • Select Lock Screen on the right side
  • Click on Windows Spotlight by making use of the Background Spotlight

However, this feature only works on Windows 10 when there is a strong internet connection. In the lack of an effective internet connection, the feature fails to download the new image as the Lock Screen picture.

Windows spotlight stuck on one picture: Fixing

If the windows spotlight stuck on the same picture a few steps must be followed to make it work again.  The primary idea is to get rid of all the downloaded image and then reset the settings so that the feature works again:

Disabling the Spotlight Feature:

  • Click to open the Settings
  • Click on Personalization
  • Click on the Lock Screen
  • Following the above steps, open the “Background”  drop-down option then go on to select the Picture or Slideshow option

Cleaning the Spotlight Assets and Settings:

Windows Spotlight Not Working
Windows Spotlight Not Working
  • This step is crucial to get rid of all the images stored in the device locally:
  • Click on start
  • Search for the Run tab and then click on the top results
  • Then Click on Ok
  • Select all the available files and then delete them all to clear all the old pictures

Reset Spotlight:

The following steps must be followed to reset the Spotlight settings on Windows 10:

  • Click on Start
  • Click on Run and then select the top results
  • Type the path “ %USERPROFILE%/AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\Settings” and click on Ok
  • Once inside the setting folder, right-click on the settings.dat and roaming.lock files separately.
  • Then click on the Rename option and go on to change the names to settings.dat.bak and roaming.lock.bak. respectively.
  • Finally, restart your device

Windows 10 lock screen windows spotlight not changing,

Windows Spotlight Not Working
Windows Spotlight Not Working

There can be many reasons which might stop Windows Spotlight from fetching new images from Bing. Though there are a number of ways to go about this problem resetting Windows Spotlight settings and preference may not be of assistance most of the time.

However, before you get on with the other means to fix the issue, look into the following points and make sure you have them checklist:

Check your internet connection:

The Microsoft Spotlight downloads the lock screen images from the internet. Thus, in the absence of a proper internet network, Microsoft Spotlight will not be able to route these images properly. Thus before going to the various setting changes, it’s advisable to check the LAN or Wifi connection first when the Spotlight stops working.

Stop The Windows Spotlight

Select the Start menu option, then select on the Setting of the app. Click on Personalization and select Lock Menu. Once done with that, change the Background option to either Pictures or Slideshow

Re-register the services

In case the Spotlight feature stops, a user can try to reset it using Powershell.

  •  Begin by launching the command prompt as administrator. Use the command Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers |Where-Object {$_.InstallLocation -like “*SystemApps*”} | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}  and place Enter.
  • Once this step is complete, the personalization setting needs to be reset to Windows Spotlight.
  • Finally, Restart the computer.

Delete Spotlight Files:

In case your windows spotlight images are not changing, you can delete the Spotlight files. Since Spotlight collects its images from Bing, if any of these files are corrupt, it could affect the performance of the Windows Spotlight. In such cases, deleting the files helps to a great extent.

The Windows Explorer  can be used to navigate the path for the user profile %USERPROFILE%/AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets

It’s important to select all the files and delete them. Finally, restart the system and check if the Windows Spotlight is working. Indeed it gets very disturbing if the Windows features stop working. However, there is nothing to panic about as there are multiple ways to fix the issue in hand.

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