The News and Interests widget is a very interesting feature on Windows 10. One may see all news, sports, weather info, and others right under the same tile. Despite the fact it provides very useful data, there are some users who don’t want this feature on the taskbar. If you are one such user and want to disable News and Interests on Windows 10, follow this guide till the end.
When does Microsoft bring News and features?
The tech giant first introduced its users to News and Interests with the onset of Windows 10 21h1 build 19043.962. Keep this icon enabled and you will get notifications related to trending news, sports, stocks, and weather. With this feature enabled, you need not look into the different topics separately over the internet.
How to disable Windows 10 News and Interests
If you no longer want the News and Interests widget appearing on the taskbar, try out these methods –
1] Hide News & Interests via taskbar settings
We don’t suggest disabling this News and Interests widget as you might find this useful someday and want to get it back on your taskbar. Hide this widget from the taskbar via the Settings page so that you can always turn it On when the need arises. Keep this hidden for a few days and if you genuinely feel no importance of this tool, you can always permanently disable this feature.
Let’s look into how to disable News and Interests on Windows 10 –
- Point your mouse over the News and interests menu, and you will see a list of options available there.
- Using this, you may choose one of the following – Show icon and text, Show icon only, and Turn off.
- Click Turn off and this widget stops appearing on the Taskbar.
If you ever want to re-enable this Widget feature on Windows 10, just undo the above changes, and the News & Interests section will re-appear on the taskbar.
2] Modify the registry settings for Widgets
In case you no longer want this feature to pop up on your taskbar, you may turn this off permanently via the registry. Here’s what you need to do on your Windows 10 PC –
Imp: Make sure to follow the below steps carefully as any wrongdoings may corrupt the entire PC. For the safe side, you may also create a backup of your whole registry.
- Press Win + S to launch the Search window.
- Type “
regedit” in the text bar and when the Registry Editor appears, click on it. - On the registry, navigate to the below path –
- When the registry opens up, navigate to the following –
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds
- Head over to the right side and look for an entry named “ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode”.
- If you don’t find such an entry, right-click on the Feeds folder and proceed as follows –
New > DWORD (32-bit). - Rename this DWORD entry as “ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode“.
- Double-click on this newly created DWORD key and put “2” instead of “0” on its Value data field. Doing this will disable the ‘News and Interests’ widget from appearing on the taskbar on Windows 10. If you are on Windows 11, this will disable the Widgets appearing on the taskbar.
- Hit OK to save the changes made so far and reboot your PC.
Note: To re-enable this News and Interests widget back on the taskbar, undo the changes that you performed above. All steps will remain the same except for changing the value data field from “2” to “0”.
Tip: If you are wondering what happens if you put “1” instead of “0”, try doing the same. Upon changing the Value data field to 1, you will find only an icon appearing instead of the whole widget on the taskbar. I hope you get what actually happens when you change the Value data to 0, 1, and 2 respectively.
3] Modify the Group Policy Settings
Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and other professional edition users may modify the Group Policy instead to disable the Widgets appearing on the taskbar.
Here’s what you need to change inside the Group Policy –
- Press Win + R to launch the Run dialog.
- Type “
gpedit.msc” on it and hit the OK button. - Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components, and locate News and Interests.
- Head over to the right pane and double-click on the policy – Enable news and interests on the taskbar.
- When this policy page opens up, tick the Disabled radio button.
- Click Apply and then OK to confirm the recent changes on your computer.
Close the Group Policy and restart your PC. Sign back into your device again and you will not find the News and Interests section appearing on your Windows 10 taskbar.
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