How-To: Set Desktop Wallpaper on Chrome

Unlike other browsers, the option to save an image as desktop background is missing from Chrome’s right-click context menu. There are two ways to overcome this:

1. Install “Set image as wallpaper” Chrome extension

This Chrome extension returns the “Set image as wallpaper” option to your right-click context menu. In the settings, you can decide whether you want a preview to be displayed whenever you set a wallpaper.

If you’re opt for no preview, you can select the default position (stretch, center, tile, fill, fit) of your wallpaper, so that the next time you set a wallpaper, it will come into effect automatically without any prompt.
With a preview however, you can see for yourself how the wallpaper would look like before selecting the position.

Install “Set image as wallpaper” extension for Chrome (Windows only)

2. Setting wallpaper manually without extension

If you are not changing your desktop wallpaper frequent enough to justify yet another new extension installation, you can choose do it in a less convenient way.

1. Right-click on the image you want to set as your wallpaper
2. Select “Save image as…” and save the image
3. Locate the image you’ve just saved
4. Right-click, select “Set as desktop background“

Not very elegant, but still get the job done. It obviously would be painfully tedious if you are setting many different wallpapers to see how they look like before deciding in this way.

Just use another browser for wallpaper browsing

The above two methods don’t sound like a plan to you? Just use another browser whenever you are looking for wallpapers. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox has the option by default to save an image as wallpaper in the right-click context menu.
IE9 Beta is looking quite good comparing to any of its older versions, you might want to give it a try.