Using Windows 7 theme desktop background on your Mac

I have a Windows 7 laptop and my wife has a Mac.

Microsoft has some beautiful wall-papers that they provide as part of their Windows 7 theme packs.

My wife wanted these for her laptop too. So instead of just copying the files over to her computer, I decided to try and figure out how to let her open up themes directly on her own Mac so that she could use them.

Here are the steps:

The Windows 7 theme packs are just zip files. Unfortunately, just renaming them and then trying to unzip them on a Mac does not work. Instead what you need is the StuffIt Expander tool: Download it from: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/stuffitexpander.html

Next go over to the Microsoft Personalization Gallery: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/personalize and download a theme to your desktop.

Go to the Applications folder and open up StuffIt Expander.

Next drag the theme file on to the StuffIt Expander window.

This will extract the files from inside the theme file onto your desktop. Browse to the folder inside containing all the wall-papers for the theme. Copy the images over to your pictures folder (or where ever you keep all your wall paper images). Thats it. you are done!

One of my favorite themes is the “Bing’s Best” theme. (The thumbnails in the first image in this post are from that theme).

Enjoy!