In April 2021, Microsoft began rolling out the new News & Interests feature for Windows 10 users worldwide. News & Interests appears as a taskbar widget to give you the information you prefer. While the News & Interests Taskbar widget is enabled by default, it takes up some space on the taskbar and gets in your way. There is an easy way to disable it.
One of the reasons you might want to disable the shiny new Taskbar widget is because it looks blurry. Few reports of these instances force users to look for ways to fix the issue or disable the widget until Microsoft releases an update with a patch. Some users also call it a weather widget, partly because it shows weather information and an icon in the Taskbar. This can be distracting and make the Taskbar look cluttered for some users.
Either way, there are ways to control what appears in the Taskbar.
Let’s start.
Disable or Enable News & Interests Taskbar Widget
The steps to enable or disable the Weather or the News & Interests widget are pretty easy.
Stage 1: Right click on the widget in the Taskbar.
Step 2: Select News & Interests and select Close.
This much. The widget should disappear from your Taskbar.
To re-enable the News & Interests widget, click anywhere on the Taskbar where there is no icon to open the context menu and under ‘News & interests’ select ‘Show icon and text’.
Customize News & Interests Taskbar Widget
There are a few more options you’ll notice in the context menu. One of them is ‘Show icon only’. When you select it, Windows displays a weather icon that will only simulate weather outside of your current location. In my case, it shows the Sun icon, so it’s sunny outside.
Otherwise, both the icon and the temperature outside and Sunny, Raining, etc. It would show a short message with a word like
In our case, the word Sunny disappeared shortly after taking the screenshot for some reason.
The last two options can be enabled and disabled at the same time. The reduced Taskbar updates seem to have no effect on the widget. Judging by its name, it should reduce the number of news or update a view while the widget is open.
There was no noticeable change in our case.
The other option is Open with hover, which, when you hover the mouse cursor over the widget for a moment, shows the widget with all the updates such as news, weather, and ratings.
This can be annoying as you can accidentally activate the widget window while working on the computer or trying to access the System Tray. Microsoft understands this and therefore provides a way to disable the hover function.
Manage News and Interests Widget
The News & Interests widget acts as a hub for browsing news, weather, and market information. You can evaluate breaking news, weather conditions, and follow your favorite teams. And if you want to read the news in detail, you can open it in Edge by clicking on the news.
You can easily manage the categories or interests you want to receive updates or consume news. To do this, click the Manage interests button at the top.
There are some broad categories to choose from, but there’s also a search bar to subscribe to specific topics like Tesla or New York if that’s what you want.
Taking a leaf from the Google app design, Microsoft also added some flashcards such as traffic, weather and sports.
However, the news feed is not scrollable forever, and there is no way to search for news either. You will get 7-8 news at a time and then an option for the ‘See more news’ button at the bottom. Clicking this opens MSN.com.
The News & Interests widget is just that, a widget that displays various information and cards that you can customize. We wish there was a way to show the weather only in the Taskbar and nothing more. But that’s just us.
Clear the Taskbar
The News & Interests widget is a good way to get a quick look at the latest news and weather information. However, its placement can mess up your workflow. The News and Interests widget in the Taskbar itself is distracting and makes the Taskbar very busy. Follow the solution mentioned above to remove it from the taskbar in Windows 10.