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 in Windows 11/10
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:
- Open File Explorer
- Navigate to the Documents folder located in C:\Users\<username>
- Right-click on the folder and select Properties.
- Open Location tab and enter the desired new path.
- Click Move.
- It will open the Explorer dialog box.
- Navigate to and select the desired new location; or else manually enter the path.
- 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:
- Right-click on the Windows 11 Start menu and select Settings.
- In the Settings app, select the System category from the left pane.
- Now, click on the Storage tab on the right side.
- Expand the Advanced storage settings to view the options present under this section.
- 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:
- By using the Pictures Properties.
- Via the Settings app of Windows 11/10.
- 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
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.
Nice post. The feature falls short, since you can’t change the exact folder location. I would like to change the default account folders to something completely different. Is there a way to do that in Win 10? Thanks
Is this what you are looking for? http://forum.thewindowsclub.com/windows-7-management-support/32826-change-default-location-documents-folder-windows.html
On my clean install of W10 the dropdowns have no other option in them?
The latest update of Windows 10 has removed the folder location tab. There does not seem to be anyway to change the folder location on the drive. I had mine set to sync with OneDrive. Now I cannot change this. Seems a step backward to me
This solution sucks, here is the work around:
Open My Pictures
Select Camera Roll Folder
Drag or Cut/Paste this the Camera Roll Folder to desired destination
All newly taken photos will appear in this folder.
Mine now uploads straight to Google Drive.
OK, but what I want and am unable to set is to a network drive on my server. When I follow the instructions above the only option I have is for the C drive. I don’t want to move the documents or photo’s or music personal folders I want to set this up to look at my ‘Y’ drive (one of my server drives where 90% of what I want to save is).
This is crazy.
As I try to keep files of the same “use” in the old directories where they are coming from, now I have to do long tours to save them in the “right” directory.
I have to say, to the Win 10 programmers, that I do not work with only one project, but maybe hundreds of little projects, so saving in a common directory is just the most idiotic thing I could ever imagine.
So far advantages seems to have been more than problems, with win10, but this one is really a pain in the butt.
And your instructions help a little, but not totally. Thanks for trying, anyway.
Anand,
does this method automatically create a “Users” and sub folders on the destination drive? And will this move existing users folders to that drive? And what if we already have a “Users” folder created (my case it probably doesn’t have the right owner and permissions/security/acl’s)
Thanks!!
I just did this having to clean install due the fantastic black screen boot loop, repair loop. Anyway It did not use my Users folder and created another one with my login name- I will just move the files by hand from the old Users /name/photos docs etc. a bit of a hassle but don’t want to fill the SSD up
My issue is a little different, but this seems to be the closest string to it. When I am “saving as” to browse for a folder Windows opens File Explorer, but instead of opening at the top where Quick Access appears, it moves down to OS (C:). As a result I have to scroll up to get to the Quick Access area where 90% of my files can be quickly located. Is there a way to set the view so that it opens at the top of File Explorer where the Quick Access folders are?
Ok, so I downloaded images from my camera. Oops, disclaimer, I’m a MAC head just got this acer laptop. So I’m in settings, see three drives where my camera download landed. I open D drive see all the images but a) how do I create a folder in pictures folder to select the images by project, b) I haven’t upgraded my onedrive so it’s full with just one download but my acer has a ton of storage (1/2 tb) so I’d like to keep them there until I figure out how to partition my images by folders within the picture folder. (does that make sense to anyone?) c) please help instruct me from download to saving images in windows 10. I’m dissilusioned by not giving up.
For some reason, I cannot change the Save Location for documents nor photos. They were both set to OneDrive (without me agreeing to thIs) and when I try to switch them back to the C Drive, an Apply button pops up, I press it, and after thinking a few seconds, it reverts back to OneDrive. Any thoughts?
does not work. When I change location to “this PC” and click apply, it reverts back to OneDrive.
I have no idea how OneDrive was selected as my default picture folder and can not get rid of it.
Please help
Unfortunately for my saved locations each and every one of the drop downs only show ‘This PC.’ The drop downs don’t give me any other options. Can you help with this?
Why is it that I can not change my “New Photos and Videos”? It will always go back to OneDrive. Please give a solution. Hope anybody can reply soon. Thanks
This doesn’t allow me to find the Folder that Photos are saved into, only the Drive, ie. C:.
In the newest version of windows 10 you need to go to the above but then go under “More storage settings” and click “Change where new content is saved”. In my case I wanted it to go to my optical drive and not my SSD so I change it all to that drive, it created all new folders and then I moved the little bit I had over. As far as Downloads I just changed that in my browser.
Thanks. Updated post.
I am trying to change my default saving location from One Drive (since it is full, keeps notifying me and does not allow me to save updated documents that were originally saved on my one drive) to ‘This PC.’ However, every time I try to change this setting, I press ‘Apply,’ and it automatically reverts back to OneDrive. Any ideas?
dog head
Ditto, well written but useless article, since does not show how to change what folder to save to as default.
I too would like to change this. Do you find out how to do so?
I had to also change the shortcut location, click move to option to the new location and finally remove the old locations from file history under backup and add the new locations. The above did not accomplish this although you would think MS have had this automated.
nope doesn’t work – while there are several “drop down menus,” none of them actually “drop down” so there is no way to change the default save locations
drop down window drops nothing down??????it is inoperable?????greyed out not active???
mine will not drop down????
Just go to My Pictures click create shortcut and then click and drag the shortcut to where ever you want it to be. You’ll have two folders with the with duplicate photos in each but its much easier to access this way once you place the shortcut where its easiest for you to get to.
Having the same issue with windows 10. The drop down boxes are all stuck on “This PC” and can not be changed. There are no options to change the “save location” for files. Only “This PC”.