Category: Tech Tip | Published: 2026-07-28
You took a screenshot six months ago and saved it somewhere sensible at the time. Now you need it and cannot remember where it went. You know it is on the computer. You just cannot find it.
This is one of those small frustrations that most Windows users have run into at some point, and the solution is built right into File Explorer. There is a search term that tells Windows to look for every image file in a folder and all its subfolders, regardless of what the files are called. It takes about ten seconds to use and works immediately.
The Search Term You Need
The key to searching for photos by file type rather than by name is a Windows search filter called kind. When you type kind:=picture into the File Explorer search box, Windows looks through the selected location for every file it recognises as an image: JPGs, PNGs, GIFs, BMPs, TIFFs, and others.
The reason this is more useful than searching by filename is that most image files have names that give nothing away. Screenshots are often named automatically with a timestamp or a string of numbers. Photos from a phone tend to arrive with camera-generated filenames. Scanned documents and downloaded images are the same. Searching by name means you need to know the name. Searching by kind means you just need to know what type of file you are looking for.
How to Do It Step by Step
Here is exactly how to search for photos anywhere on your Windows PC.
First, open File Explorer. You can do this by pressing the Windows key and E at the same time, or by clicking the folder icon in the taskbar. Once it is open, navigate to the location you want to search. This might be your Pictures folder, your Documents folder, a specific drive, or your whole PC by selecting This PC from the left-hand panel.
Once you are in the right place, click the search box in the top-right corner of the File Explorer window. Type kind:=picture exactly as shown, then press Enter.
Windows will go through that location and every folder inside it, pulling up every image file it finds. Depending on how many pictures you have and which drive or folder you are searching, this might take a few seconds or a little longer.
You can then scroll through the results, sort them by date modified to find the most recent ones, or narrow things down further if needed.
Where to Start Your Search
The single most important thing to get right when you search for photos this way is choosing the right starting point.
File Explorer only searches within the folder you currently have open, plus everything inside it. If you start the search inside your Downloads folder, it will only look there. If the image you need is actually in Documents, you will not find it.
If you are not sure where the photo might be, the safest option is to start from This PC, which tells Windows to search across every drive connected to your computer. That is the broadest possible search and will take a little longer, but it means nothing gets missed.
If you have a rough idea of where the file lives, starting from a more specific location will give you quicker results. Your Pictures folder, Desktop, or Documents are usually good places to begin if you have a sense of where you tend to save things.
Other Ways to Use the Kind Filter
Once you know how the kind filter works for photos, it is worth knowing that the same approach applies to other file types. Searching kind:=document pulls up Word files, PDFs, and other documents. Searching kind:=video finds video files. Searching kind:=music locates audio files.
This makes it a genuinely flexible tool for those moments when you know what type of file you are looking for but not where it ended up.
You can also combine the kind filter with other search terms in File Explorer. If you search for kind:=picture and then sort the results by date taken or date modified, you can quickly find images from a particular period without scrolling through everything.
A Quicker Way to Search for Photos on Windows 11
If you are running Windows 11 and have Windows Search indexing turned on, you can also use the taskbar search box to find photos. Typing a rough description of what you are looking for, or a date, can sometimes surface recent images quickly without needing File Explorer at all.
For more comprehensive searching across your whole machine, though, the kind:=picture method in File Explorer remains one of the most reliable approaches, because it is not dependent on the search index being up to date and it works consistently across different versions of Windows.
Getting More From the Tools You Already Have
The kind:=picture search is a small example of something that applies more broadly: Windows includes a lot of useful functionality that most people never discover because it is not obviously signposted. Knowing where to look, and knowing the right search terms and shortcuts, can save a surprising amount of time across the course of a working week.
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