Customize the Lock and Sign-In Screens (24H2)

The Windows 11 Lock screen appears when you wake up, power on, 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 get to work.

Get to know the Lock and Sign-in screens

The Lock screen provides a number of useful displays, including the date and time, a status update 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.

If you’re playing audio and the screen locks, the Lock screen displays interactive media controls in their own card.

When you move past the Lock screen, Windows 11 displays the Sign-in screen, where you authenticate your account and sign in to Windows. Depending on which sign-in methods you’ve enabled, you will 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:

Personalize your lock screen

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 pleasant and of very high quality, 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 a personal photo or photo slideshow instead.

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” to
“Off” since you’ll otherwise see the same advertising bubbles that make Windows Spotlight less desirable.

Choose an app to display Lock screen status information

Windows 11 lets you configure one app to deliver detailed status information on the bottom middle of the lock screen. This feature has been unwound significantly since the initial release of Windows 11, and at the time of this writing, there is only one choice–oddly called “Weather and more”–in a clean installation of the system. So unless you install an app that links into this capability, you can choose between that and … well, nothing.

“Weather and more” is attractive and even useful, but it’s in no way configurable. When enabled, as it is by default, you will see four cards–Weather, Finance, Traffic, and Sports–on the bottom of the Lock screen. Each provides up-to-date and at-a-glance information, which is useful, and the presentation is attractive.

But as noted, there’s no way to configure these cards. You can’t rearrange them, display only those cards in which you’re interested, or make any other changes. They’re either on or off.

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

To disable Lock screen status information, 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 black background instead.

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.”