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How to disable the new News & Interests weather widget on the Windows 10 taskbar or using the registry.
Microsoft is gradually rolling out the News & Interest widget on the Windows taskbar to all Windows 10 users, version 1909, 2004, 20H2, and 21H1, who have installed the KB5003637 update. Previously, it was tested for several months on the Dev channel. News & Interests makes it easy to stay up to date: the widget displays weather information on the taskbar, and hovering over the widget icon opens a personalized news feed.
What is News & Interests widget?
It displays weather information on the Windows 10 taskbar. The information is displayed for your geographic location. Thus, the temperature and weather conditions are displayed directly on the taskbar. When you hover over the widget icon, news and interests are displayed, hence the function’s name.
When you click on the icon with a left mouse button, a widget with a personalized news feed opens.
By default, it contains basic news, sports, weather, finance, and traffic information for the selected region and language. Ads are not displayed, and links are opened in the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser, even if a different browser is installed as the default browser on the system. But there’s already a way to make the News & Interests widget in Windows 10 use your default browser.
To customize the widget, click on the “three dots” menu and select “Language and Content.” You can change the region and language and disable or enable certain cards depending on your interests.
However, here you cannot change the location to display the weather. This can be done in the “News and Interests” widget by selecting the menu with three dots on the weather card and clicking on the “Change location” option. You can switch from automatic detection to a fixed location.
Method 1: How to disable the News & Interests widget from taskbar setting
Some users may not like the new widget. You can disable the News & Interests widget to remove it from the taskbar:
- Right-click the News & Interests icon on the Windows 10 taskbar.
- In the menu that opens, select News & Interests.
- To disable this feature completely, select Turn Off.
- You can also select Show icon only to display the widget icon on the taskbar without a weather summary.
- You can also select the Reduce taskbar updates option.
- The changes take effect immediately. To restore this feature, right-click an empty space on the taskbar, select News and Interests, and then either Show Icon and Text or Show Icon Only.
Method 2: How to disable the News & Interests widget using the system registry
Administrators can disable the widget and configure its behavior using the system registry:
- Open Windows Registry Editor (for example, by pressing Win + R, type regedit, and then press Enter) and confirm the UAC prompt.
- Go along the way:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds
- Right-click Feeds and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
- Name it.
ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode - The following values are supported:
- Value 0: Weather icon and temperature are displayed.
- Value 1:Only the weather icon is displayed.
- Value 2: The function is disabled.
- Restart your computer.
Bonus Method:
To disable/enable the “News and Interests” widget on the taskbar for all users on your computer, you can use ready-made reg-files. Restart the computer after the application.
Conclusion:
I hope this guide on How to disable the News & Interests widget in Windows 10 was easy. If you face any issues, please comment below. Also, let us know: Did you like the new widget “News and Interests”?
