Microsoft’s Windows Insider wallpapers were created on a Mac, metadata reveals

Microsoft sent out a new set of 10 new wallpapers for the Windows Insider Program in mid-October. However, the package had some interesting hidden signs about how they were produced. It turns out these assets have various metadata tags that link to macOS and Adobe Photoshop.

Metadata in the latest update reveals Mac creation

As in, these assets were not designed on Windows. Which is interesting given the prevalence of multi-platform design workflows in many modern software projects — even for those directly competing against a product like Apple's ecosystem.

Specifically, it was the curious design found by developer Rafael Rivera who picked up on the particular metadata within the image files. Rafael noted on X that the wallpapers were "Made on Mac". Indeed, looking at the files themselves, they showed signs of this.

Specifically, that the metadata had these wallpapers saved and finalized with Adobe Photoshop for Mac. Which is not the typical toolkit for internal assets in Windows.

If you were to dig into the ZIP files that make the wallpapers available. You'll notice there are also __MACOSX folders in the ZIP archive. Those are hidden folders that macOS generates whenever you compress files with it.

It's a good sign that at least the packaging work was also performed on a Mac. It's a mix of the Photoshop data and the macOS archive folders that lead you to this conclusion.

After these initial observations were publicly noted, Microsoft quickly updated the original wallpaper files with fixed versions. This quick response would indicate the team was aware of the metadata exposure and wanted to get the assets "clean" for general release. This would've also been in sync with the larger Microsoft marketing push about the Surface Laptop Ultra and how it's a worthy MacBook Pro alternative.

A lot of the same balance and stability topics were discussed when we covered the last Windows Insider update. This particular instance is an operational insight into Microsoft and its software assets. The fixed wallpapers are now available to users who've signed up for the Insider rings. So no one is left with external platform markings on the end product.