Windows 8 has many unique features which were not present in the older versions of Windows. In Windows 8, you can create picture password for your account. The picture password is a set of gestures made over a picture. You have to make the same set of gestures in the same order to login to Windows. Because there are millions of possible gestures in different locations of the image, the picture password is very much stronger than the normal text password. The picture password feature is specially designed for touchscreen computers. If you have a touchscreen PC running Windows 8, then you can follow these steps to create a picture password :
- Press the key combination Windows logo key + I to display the Charms bar in the right side of your screen. In the charms bar, click/tap on Change PC Settings which is displayed at the very bottom of the charms bar.
- In the PC Settings screen that opens up, select Users on the left side. Then click/tap on Create a picture password on the right side under the Sign-in options. Your account must have a password before these options appear. If you have not set a password for your user account, then you can read how to create a password for your user account in Windows 8.
- After entering your user account password a new screen would open, showing you information about what a picture password is and what type of gestures you can use. Click/tap on the Choose button to select a picture for your password. It is better to select a picture with many objects or people in it as it would be difficult to guess the gestures for a hacker.
- After selecting the picture, you can adjust its location on screen by dragging it up and down or left and right. Then click/tap on the Use this picture button. Now you are shown a screen with your selected picture where you can make three gestures to set as your password. You can make point-tap gestures, circle gestures and straight-line gestures. Windows confirms the gestures and their order once again so that you do not make any mistake.
- If you forget any step or you think you wanted a different kind of gesture or you want to make a different order of gestures, then you can click/tap on the Start over button and the picture password creation process would start all over again. Finally click/tap on the Finish button to finalize and set your picture password for your account.
The size, position and direction of the gestures are set as your picture password. Always remember these gestures in the correct order, position, size and direction for successfully logging into your Windows 8 PC using the picture password feature. But if you forget the picture password, then you can always click/tap on the Switch to password button (or use password option from under sign-in options) to use your text password to login to Windows.