Customize the Lock and Sign-In Screens (23H2) (Archived)

The Windows 11 Lock screen appears when you power on, wake up, or unlock your PC. When you tap a key, click the mouse, or touch the display, the Sign-in screen appears so you can access the Desktop and begin work.

Get to know the Lock and Sign-in screens

The Lock screen provides a number of useful displays, including the date and time, an alert from a single app, and a high-quality photo that changes every day by default. There are also informational boxes about the photo and promotional areas for Microsoft products and services.

When you move past the Lock screen, Windows 11 displays the Sign-in screen, where you authenticate your account and sign into Windows. Depending on which sign-in methods you’ve enabled, you can see options to enter a PIN or password, or authenticate using Windows Hello facial or fingerprint recognition.

Customize the Lock screen

Windows 11 offers only a few ways to customize the Lock screen. To do so, open Settings (WINKEY + I) and navigate to Personalization > Lock screen.

The following settings are available:

Choose a background

By default, the Lock screen uses a feature called Windows Spotlight to provide a new, high-quality background photo from Bing every day.

The photos provided by Windows Spotlight are very nice, and they are accompanied by some informational bubbles that provide you with more details about that day’s photo.

But Windows Showcase also displays advertising bubbles for Microsoft products and services like the Microsoft Edge web browser, the Microsoft Store, and so on.

If this is undesirable to you, the only way you can remove these ads is to disable Windows Spotlight and choose your own picture or slideshow instead. This may be desirable regardless of your feelings about the subtle ads that Microsoft puts on the Lock screen.

To do so, select the drop-down next to “Personalize your lock screen.”

Then, choose “Picture” or “Slideshow” and configure it accordingly. In both cases, be sure to set the option “Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen” since what you’ll see otherwise is the same advertising bubbles that make Windows Spotlight less desirable.

Choose an app to deliver Detailed status alerts

Windows 11 lets you configure one app to deliver detailed status alerts on the bottom middle of the lock screen. And not just any app will do: In a typical Windows 11 install, only four bundled apps–Calendar, Dev Home, Mail, and Weather–qualify.

Calendar is the default choice, and as you might imagine, it displays your next event or meeting right on the Lock screen so you know what’s next when you wake up or turn on your PC.

To configure a different app to deliver detailed status alerts, select the drop-down next to “Lock screen status” and choose accordingly.

To disable Detailed status alerts, set it to “None.”

Where did it go?

Unlike with Windows 10, the Windows 11 Lock screen doesn’t let you configure up to 7 apps that can display quick status alerts, which were a much simpler type of icon-based alert. There is no workaround, sorry.

Customize the Sign-in screen

The Windows 11 Sign-in screen offers even fewer customization options than the Lock screen. In fact, there’s only one.

By default, Windows 11 displays the same background on the Sign-in screen as it does on the Lock screen. This makes the transition between the two more seamless and, we think, more attractive. But if this is undesirable, you can disable the use of the Lock screen background on the Sign-in screen. When you do so, the Sign-in screen will display a plain background in black.

To do so, open Lock screen settings as noted above and change the option “Show the lock screen background picture on the sign-in screen” to “Off.”