How to Use Bing Wallpaper Slideshow on Windows 7

The very first thing that we all do when using our Windows PC for the very first time, is to change the wallpaper or desktop backgrounds as they are now called. In Windows 7, we can right-click on the desktop and choose to Personalize the desktop. This opens a window from where we can choose the desktop backgrounds, themes and sound schemes.

In addition to the single desktop backgrounds and the wallpapers included with the themes, Windows 7 allows you to use a set of wallpapers called Desktop Slideshow. When we use Desktop Slideshow, the wallpapers can change after a specified time interval and are sequentially picked from the group of wallpapers.

We can use this feature to use the Bing wallpapers as out desktop wallpapers. Bing search engine shows a stunning image as its background every single day. These images can be fetched and used as wallpapers for our Windows 7 desktop. A custom Desktop Slideshow can be arranged so that we can get Bing wallpapers in desktop slideshow using their RSS feed. This way we can get new wallpapers right from the Bing RSS feed. Here is how you can do this :

  1. Create a file named bing.theme with the following contents :
    [Theme]
    DisplayName=Bing
    
    [Slideshow]
    Interval=1800000
    Shuffle=1
    RssFeed=https://feeds.feedburner.com/bingimages
    
    [Control Panel\Desktop]
    TileWallpaper=0
    WallpaperStyle=2
    Pattern=
    
    [Control Panel\Cursors]
    AppStarting=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_working.ani
    Arrow=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_arrow.cur
    Crosshair=
    Hand=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_link.cur
    Help=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_helpsel.cur
    IBeam=No=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_unavail.cur
    NWPen=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_pen.cur
    SizeAll=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_move.cur
    SizeNESW=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_nesw.cur
    SizeNS=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_ns.cur
    SizeNWSE=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_nwse.cur
    SizeWE=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_ew.cur
    UpArrow=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_up.cur
    Wait=%SystemRoot%\cursorsaero_busy.ani
    DefaultValue=Windows Aero
    Link=
    
    [VisualStyles]
    Path=%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\Aero\Aero.msstyles
    ColorStyle=NormalColor
    Size=NormalSize
    ColorizationColor=0X6B74B8FC
    Transparency=1
    
    [MasterThemeSelector]
    MTSM=DABJDKT
  2. Double-click on this file bing.theme to set it as your theme.
  3. You would see a prompt to subscribe to the RSS feed. Choose Download Attachments.
  4. You should see that wallpapers are being downloaded from Bing and displayed on your Windows desktop.

Update (2022): Now the old Bing RSS feed from 2010 has stopped working. If you want to keep your Windows desktop alive with the daily Bing images, then you can use the official Bing Wallpaper application from Microsoft. Bing Wallpaper software can be downloaded from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/bing-wallpaper.