Reset Windows Spotlight

Question

I am using Windows Spotlight on the lock screen of my Windows 10 laptop, and I have accidently liked some photos, and the keep coming up. is there a way to 'change your mind' about a photo, or just reset the whole thing?

Answer 1

I was also frustrated by this very same issue with the Windows Spotlight Lockscreen image on Windows 10.

Being unable to "change your mind" after having previously selected either "I want more" or "Not a fan" is a real pain. I've described below what worked for me. It may not be a full solution, especially if Microsoft change the way Spotlight works, but for now it seems to be a good enough work around.

WARNING: This involves changing values in the Windows Registry so be warned that it is generally considered a dangerous practice if you're not sure of what you're doing. Proceed at your own risk. Don't hold me liable if you break your machine.

The basic idea is that the current lockscreen image is stored at the following registry path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lock Screen\Creative

1. Open the Windows Registry
2. Follow the registry path:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lock Screen\Creative
3. Find the key "CreativeJson" and double click on it. The 'Edit String' dialog will open.
   • Go to the 'Value data' field. It contains a rather long json string with parameters affecting how the lockscreen image operates.
   • Start scrolling through the json string from the very left and you'll find a lot of key-value pairs in there including: "creativeId", "placementId", "impressionToken" among others. (These are not very useful for what we need, but i've pointed them out just as a check-point to see if you're on the right track)
   • The important ones for this process start approaching when you see "onHover", "onPositiveFeedback", "onNegativeFeedback" and the one that will solve our problems 'feedbackProvided'.
   • If you've previously given feedback it will have value of "true". If you have not it will be "false". So in our case where we want to change the decision we made, it should already read "true", so it will involve changing the value from "true" to "false".
   • Change this particular value and it should read now "feedbackProvided":false
     (NB: Don't change anything else. The entire rest of the string should remain the same)
4. Once you've done this click "Ok" and you can close the registry.
5. If you lock your screen now the current image should now allow you to make a choice again.

Note: As this registry path holds the settings for the current lock screen image, several parameters will obviously change when the Windows decides to change the lock screen for you. I think among these many parameters they have some sort of "Time-to-Live" for the current lockscreen.

Note2: The location of where the images are stored is also found at the registry path mentioned above, but at the Registry Key "HotspotImageFolderPath". On most Win 10 machines at the moment, the default should be:

C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\ LocalState\Assets

Update: Here is a Powershell script to update the feedback flag:

$creativeJson = (Get-ItemProperty 'HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lock Screen\Creative').CreativeJson | ConvertFrom-Json
$creativeJson.cdm.feedbackEvents.feedbackProvided = $false
New-ItemProperty -Path 'HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lock Screen\Creative' -Name CreativeJson -Value ($creativeJson | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 100 -Compress) -Force

Answer 2

I just encountered the same issue as described by Blazinator. And note: This is after having previously been able to view and edit the string..

However I can inform that THE STRING IS ACTUALLY THERE! It is just invisible, for some reason: But you can highlight and copy it: Here's how:

1. Press the [home] key to place the cursor at the start of the string.
2. then press both the [shift] + [end] keys to highlight the whole string (you can't see it's highlighted but it is).
3. Press [ctrl]+[c] (or right-click and select "copy" from the menu").

Then you can paste the whole string to notepad and edit it there (Note: It'll be a good idea to de-select Word Wrap in the "Format" menu, or it might spur in some carriage return chars). And when done editing then copy and paste the whole string back (make sure to overwrite or delete the original (invisible) content).

In response to the original post, however: The "feedbackProvided" part of the string, reads "false" even though I have clicked the "like".. So my alternative solution for now is to simply replace the image file with a different image of the same filename. - Here's how:

1. Find the image file in the folder specified in Note 2 above and copy it to a convenient location.
2. The images are .jfif format; simply add .jfif as extension and open with some graphics program. (Tip: if you copy all the images and add the .jfif extension to them all then you can easily spot which one it is).
3. Then paste a different image over it and save.
4. Then remove the .jfif extension again, and copy it back to the images folder, thus overwriting the original file.

That'll work too.