Windows 11 is getting a new look according to a leak - but it might be exclusive to AI-powered PCs

It looks like Windows 11 could get a new official default wallpaper, according to leaked images that have emerged just before Microsoft Build 2024, the company’s annual conference for developers - where it’s expected that we’ll see some big debuts showing off the fruits of collaboration between Microsoft, Qualcomm, and other partners. 

Microsoft has been pretty tight-lipped about what it plans to show off, and hasn’t even officially announced the new wallpaper, although it’s already available for download in high resolution. 

This was uncovered by German tech blog WinFuture, whose sources leaked information about Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge Pro laptops with ARM chips. The leak included multiple photographs of the laptop from a variety of angles, as well as the new wallpaper, which joins the series of Windows 11 signature Bloom wallpapers (Neowin has a collection of others you can view and download). Neowin speculates that the new AI-focused PCs will ship with the new background. 

Accompanying the leak, X user @cadenzza_ shared a high-resolution version of the brand new Bloom wallpaper variation (apparently shared in a private Windows Insider Telegram group originally) that you can download by saving the image below or from @cadenzza_’s post, and set on your device.

Microsoft's lips are sealed and it's got our attention

It’s interesting how closely Microsoft’s been guarding what it’s about to share, with this static wallpaper being one of the things that we can confirm at all. Neowin has proposed that Microsoft might be crafting new desktop background effects for Windows 11, perhaps making use of the next-generation devices’ AI capabilities, and creating effects simulating depth, and possibly making the background reactive to how you move your cursor. 

We’ll have to see if this is the case at some point in the next few days as Microsoft Build goes on. We expect the announcement of consumer versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 laptops with Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors, and whatever AI innovations Microsoft wants to bring to our attention. Another new hardware introduction we expect is a Copilot keyboard button, which has been discussed for a while now. Other Copilot-related news could have to do with OpenAI’s recent debut of GPT-4o, and possibly a souped-up Windows Copilot AI assistant.

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