Microsoft's free Bing Wallpaper app for Windows is borderline malware

Several days ago, Microsoft released its Bing Wallpaper app in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 and 11. When reporting about it, some blogs took a chance to clown on the recent paid wallpaper app fiasco from a certain tech YouTuber. However, the joke is on Microsoft, as it was discovered that the free Bing Wallpaper app is borderline malware disguised as a small customization app (not the first time).

Rafael Rivera (@WithinRafael) took a dive into the guts of Bing Wallpaper and discovered quite a lot of interesting things, let's put it this way.

The app's description in the Microsoft Store does not say much. It only promises "a collection of beautiful images from around the world" that refreshes your wallpaper every day. Sounds nice. Under the hood, though, hides quite a lot of predatory practices. Besides "tapping" into your browser's cookies (Edge, Firefox, and, of course, Chrome) and having a free web geolocation API, this thing installs Bing Visual Search and upsells Microsoft's search engine right from the get-go.

There's more.

Bing Wallpaper will also try to change your browser settings, conveniently "recommending" search that "gives back time and money" for those using Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and, somewhat surprisingly, Internet Explorer. And it would not be a Microsoft product without it trying to set Microsoft Edge as the default browser with "different browser settings:"

Bing Wallpaper recommends making Microsoft Edge your default browser

World-class performance when browsing. Fast and secure search results with Bing. Tap into trending news and intelligent answers. Built-in tools to find deals while shopping online.

There is even more.

If your default browser is not Microsoft Edge, your new wallpaper app at some point will launch the default browser (just like Edge trying to poach Chrome users, again) and open a new tab with a quite surprising statement that "you've already installed Microsoft Bing Search extension" (nothing in the app's description says about that) and all that is left to do is turn it on in the extension settings. Yikes!

The good thing is that you do not have to use this hostile adware. There are plenty of great (and free) wallpaper apps for Windows 10 and 11. Dynamic Theme will let you have your Bing wallpapers without hijacking your browser or extensions (it also looks great with Windows 11-like UI); WinDynamicWallpaper can change wallpapers based on the time of the day; and Lively Wallpaper, a 2023 Microsoft Store App Awards winner, lets you have animated and interactive wallpapers. Just to name a few.