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 :
- 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
- Double-click on this file bing.theme to set it as your theme.
- You would see a prompt to subscribe to the RSS feed. Choose Download Attachments.
- 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.