get path to current desktop wallpaper

Question

As mentioned in the title, I want to get the path to the current desktop wallpaper (in C++). I tried to use SystemParametersInfo with SPI_GETDESKWALLPAPER . But this only returns this:

%AppData%\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Themes\\TranscodedWallpaper

What I really need would be something like this:

C:\\User\\...\\image.png

Is there any way to achieve this?

Answer 1

There is registry hive HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Control Panel\\Desktop . It has value with name Wallpaper . It contains the path to the current wallpaper.

Answer 2

You can go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Control Panel\\Desktop section of your registry and find six recent files transcoded to TranscodedWallpaper. There names

• TranscodedImageCache
• TranscodedImageCache_000
• TranscodedImageCache_001
• TranscodedImageCache_002
• TranscodedImageCache_003
• TranscodedImageCache_004

Basically, it can be read without any tools: Here it looks like But it can be converted to more readable view with any tool capable to show unicode text