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How To Extract Wallpapers From A Theme File On Windows 10

Themes used to work differently on Windows 7. On Windows 10, they’re basically just a wallpaper, or a set of wallpapers, an accent color, a sound profile, and a cursor. One thing that is still common is that a Windows theme is packaged as a file with a .themepack or .desktopthemepack extension. If you have a Windows theme file that you don’t like, but there are a few wallpapers in it that look good, you can easily extract wallpapers from a theme file.

SPOILER ALERT: Scroll down and watch the video tutorial at the end of this article.

This works for theme file packs with both the .themepack and .desktopthemepack files.

Extract Wallpapers From A Theme

To extract wallpapers from a theme file, you need to change the file extension to zip. When you change the format of the file, you get an on-screen prompt telling you the file may not work. Accept the prompt to change the extension. This will not damage the file, or your system in any way.

Once you’ve changed the file extension to zip, you can extract it like any other zipped file. Extract it and open the folder that you extracted it to. It may have one, or more folders but if the theme includes wallpapers, there will be a DesktopBackground folder inside it. Open it and all the wallpapers featured in the theme pack will be there. You can copy them anywhere you like.

Once you’ve got the wallpapers you wanted, you can change the file extension back to whatever it originally was and use the theme pack the same way you did before.

The only thing you need to be careful about is that if the file extension was originally desktopthemepack, then that’s what you need to change it to. Changing it to themepack when that wasn’t the original extension may prevent the theme from working. If you’re on Windows 7, both .desktopthemepack and .themepack might work but with Windows 10, it’s best to use .themepack.

If you’re interested in creating and sharing your own theme on Windows 10, it’s pretty easy. The Settings app has a dedicated Themes section under the Personalization group of settings that lets you export the current theme as a .themepack file. The .themepack file can be exported to any system, and of course you can double-click it to apply it to your desktop. If you’re using a Microsoft account with your desktop, and you’ve enabled setting sync, then applying a theme on one system ought to sync it to other desktops where you’re using the same Microsoft account to sign in.

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