Change default Save location for Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos in Windows 11/10

Windows 11/10 lets you easily change the default Save location for Documents, Music, Picture, and Video User Profile folders. You can now easily save your personal files like Documents, Music, Picture, and Videos to another drive or partition or even an external drive by default.

We have already seen how to move apps to another location and how to install Windows Apps to another Partition. The procedure for changing the default save location for personal files in Windows 11/10 is similar.

Change default location of User folders

You can change the default location of user folders like the Documents, Music, Picture, and Videos folders via their respective Folder Properties, Settings app, or by editing the Registry. Let us take a look at the procedure involved. While we have taken the Documents folder as an example, the procedure is the same for other User Profile folders as well.

1] Change default location of Documents folder using Properties

The procedure is as follows:

1. Open File Explorer
2. Navigate to the Documents folder located in C:\Users\<username>
3. Right-click on the folder and select Properties.
4. Open Location tab and enter the desired new path.
5. Click Move.
6. It will open the Explorer dialog box.
7. Navigate to and select the desired new location; or else manually enter the path.
8. Click Apply/OK.

The folder and its contents will get moved.

2] Change where new content is saved via Settings

Windows 11

By default, Windows 11 saves all new movies, TV shows, music, offline maps, videos, documents, apps, and pictures to the C drive (where Windows is installed). But it also comes with an option to change the save location or drive for apps, documents, music, apps, etc. For this, you have to go through the following steps:

1. Right-click on the Windows 11 Start menu and select Settings.
2. In the Settings app, select the System category from the left pane.
3. Now, click on the Storage tab on the right side.
4. Expand the Advanced storage settings to view the options present under this section.
5. Click Where new content is saved.

Now you will see drop-down menus for storing new apps, music, movies and TV shows, offline maps, etc. Click on those drop-down menus and select the hard drive(s) based on your requirements to change the default save location for your files.

Windows 10

Windows 10 also lets you do so via the Settings app.

Open Start Menu > Settings > System settings.

Next, click on Storage in the left pane.

Scroll down a bit and find Change where new content is saved.

Click on it to open the following panel.

Here you will see New documents will save to setting – and similar settings for Music, Pictures & Videos.

Select the location from the drop-down menu.

Thus you can set different Save locations for different types of files.

3] Change default Save location for User Profile folders via Registry

Press Win+R keys to open the Run box. Now type regedit and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor. Next, navigate to the following path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

On the right-hand side, you will a key called Personal. If you want to change the path of the Documents folder, you need to work on Personal. If you want to change the path of the Video folder, you need to use the Video. Similarly, there are Pictures for Pictures folder, Music for Music folder.

So double-click on the concerned key, and enter the new value according to your folder.

The default paths are:

• Documents: %USERPROFILE%\Documents
• Music: %USERPROFILE%\Music
• Pictures: %USERPROFILE%\Pictures
• Video: %USERPROFILE%\Videos

Having done this, exit the Registry Editor, restart your computer, and check.

The folder should have moved to the new location.

If you are suffering from low space issues after upgrading, you can use this technique to move Documents and other personal folders from the default system drive to another drive.

How do I change the default picture save location?

In Windows 11/10 operating system, all new pictures or photos are saved to the default location (C Drive). However, there’s also an option to change this default save location for pictures. YouThis can be done:

1. By using the Pictures Properties.
2. Via the Settings app of Windows 11/10.
3. By using the Registry Editor.

We have already covered all these methods in this post above.

How do I change where Windows save videos?

By default, all the new videos (and photos) are saved to Local Disk (C:). Some users are comfortable with the default location. But saving all your files at the default location (in the C Drive) may affect your system’s performance. Therefore, it is always better not to save any data in the C Drive. You can change the save location of videos using the Settings app in Windows 11/10. We have explained the entire process above in this article.

Can’t change where new content is saved on Windows 11/10

Sometimes, Windows throws an error 0x80070005 while changing the default save location on Windows 11/10. The error message that Windows displays looks like this:

We couldn’t set your default save location. The operation did not complete successfully. Try again in a bit. The error code is 0x80070005, in case you need it.

Try to log into Windows 11/10 with your administrator account and see if it helps.