Using Desktop Themes from Around the World

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 9, 2016)

5

Do you long to see the world? (At least from your desktop?) Windows provides a wide variety of desktop themes that span the globe. When you first install Windows, you inform it of your locality. This information is used to configure the operating system for things like time and date formats, currency defaults, etc. One thing it also is used for is to load a set of desktop themes that are unique to that locale.

Normally these are not available to you, but there is a way you can get to them. All you need to do is open an Explorer window and navigate to this location:

C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT

The directory contains (at least on my Windows 7 system) 15 folders, each for a separate country. The countries are not all English-speaking, but you can figure out from the two-letter codes in the folder names which countries they represent:

  • MCT-AU: Australia
  • MCT-BR: Brazil
  • MCT-CA: Canada
  • MCT-DE: Germany
  • MCT-ES: Spain
  • MCT-FR: France
  • MCT-GB: Great Britain
  • MCT-IT: Italy
  • MCT-JP: Japan
  • MCT-MX: Mexico
  • MCT-NL: Netherlands
  • MCT-PL: Poland
  • MCT-TR: Turkey
  • MCT-US: United States
  • MCT-ZA: South Africa

Open the folder for a country of interest, and you'll see a set of subfolders. One of them, Theme, contains the desktop theme for that country. If you double-click that theme file, it installs a shortcut to the theme and wallpapers in the Personalization area of the Control Panel. You can then use the themes as you would any other themes to change what you see on your desktop.

 This tip (7098) applies to Windows 7.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Turning Off Track Changes Change Bars

Word includes a feature that allows you to track changes made to a document. One of the ways in which Word marks your ...

Discover More

Reducing the Curl in Printed Documents

Have you ever printed out a document, only to have the pages curl very badly as they come out of the printer? There's a ...

Discover More

Mail Merge and Data Source Documents become Unattached

When you create a mail merge document, you attach it to a data source that is the basis for the information to be merged ...

Discover More
More WindowsTips

Displaying Seconds in the System Tray Clock

Time is more than hours and minutes. How do you get the taskbar clock to show seconds?

Discover More

Checking Your Computer's Bandwidth Capability

5 GHz wireless routers allow for fast data transfer rates. Discover how you can tell if your computer can handle those ...

Discover More

Understanding and Changing AutoPlay Settings

You can configure Windows to perform some tasks automatically. This includes telling it what to do whenever Windows ...

Discover More
Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is six more than 9?

2019-06-05 06:49:39

Jeff

Thanks for reminding me I posted here.
After a day or two of searching around I did find them.

There are also LocalPacks for China, Korea, Taiwan, and India.
CN, KR, TW, IN.


2019-05-31 11:49:30

Jeff

Wow, how do you have so many countries? In a typical en-US image I think there's ZA,CA,US,GB,AU but none of the other ones. I'm trying to find the JP one, specifically, but wondered if there were ones for China and Korea.
You might have all of them though, and only one for JP exists of those I'm interested in.
Gonna keep trying to find it around the net.


2016-10-27 03:43:40

Jo

I cant download this themes


2016-05-09 07:37:04

arnold12

I have only MCT-NL: Netherlands on my Toshiba W7x64 laptop. I don't think it's not valuable to search any farther.


2016-05-09 06:28:24

Shreepad S M Gandhi

Thanks Allen. Did not know this. Tried it. I had 5 countries on my office machine.
Good.
Thanks again for sharing.


Newest Tips