Windows 11 widgets; how to remove these annoying news feed windows in the Widgets panel?

Anonymous
2022-03-21T19:23:48+00:00

When hovering over or clicking on the Widgets shortcut the panel appears with ~50 of these stupid little windows all showing news feeds.

I don't mind the weather and a very few other widgets that show something useful but all of these news panels are pointless, annoying, and really leaning me more towards going back to Windows 10 where I can have real Live Tiles again without this excess junk.

How can we really customize this panel and remove all these unwanted news panels?

I have closed them with the upper-right 'X' which leaves them blank until the next time the panel opens.

I have chosen to 'Hide stories' from at least 100 different news agencies, but they continue to appear.

I have gone through the MS account 'personalize your interests' option to remove all possible genres of news.

Nothing removes the amount of windows shown or the genre of news that they continue to show.

I don't want to change what these little windows show, I want to delete the majority of the windows altogether so that only 4 or 5 at the most are there.

And why are these limited to these news feed type windows; weather, stocks, etc?

Why can't we create custom application shortcut widgets like in old Windows 7 & 8.1 add-ons with advanced options?

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Settings

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

67 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2022-09-24T00:45:05+00:00

    You can disable feeds alltogether:

    • right click on the process line in the bottom
    • select settings for the process line
    • disable Widgets

    Left click I believe?

    There are only 8 Widgets that can be be added, pinned or removed every other annoying piece of rubbish comes direct via MSN and no matter what one does regarding that particular feed is totally ignored!

    *The original poster (*GObonzo) was specific in what they, and every other sane user wants; only the user selected widgets enabled and nothing more or less!

    These so called "Agents" that have been responding are idiots simply cutting and pasting a standard non-sensical "answer" without addressing the actual problem! 😡

    Was this answer helpful?

    200+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2022-03-31T01:25:49+00:00

    I completely agree. So far, the only useful widget is the weather widget. How about a dictionary widget or a translation one? maybe a conversion table calculator, a couple of clocks in different timezones, or a little display of the CPU temps or network bandwidth? There's loads of things it could do.

    Instead we get page after page of only what could very loosely be described as 'news'. Will Smith slapping someone at the Oscars, someones dog that walked 100 miles home, the latest fad diet, the latest paparazzi victim and a load of sports results I literally couldn't give two whoops about. There's very little actual real news like what's going on in Ukraine or the energy crisis.

    It asks me to customise the 'Discover Interests' page and then promptly ignores my customisations.

    It could be so much better.

    Was this answer helpful?

    200+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2022-08-17T11:03:20+00:00

    From everything I've found thus far, there's no way to disable the actual newsfeed and still keep the widget board to use the true widgets like weather and traffic.

    Nothin' more than liberal propaganda, celebrity drama queens, and clickbait baddies -- so sick of this BS!

    Was this answer helpful?

    100+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2022-03-24T16:53:13+00:00

    So, if I get this right..

    To prevent the annoying news widgets from showing up the solution is to uninstall them altogether?!

    And uninstalling is better dan hiding them, because widgets that aren't being used will still be using resources?

    Think I might follow GObonzo's advice and go back to windows 10 indeed.

    Was this answer helpful?

    90+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2022-05-04T21:15:45+00:00

    Frustrating indeed that Microsoft forces news feeds on paying customers. However there is a way to neutralize the feed so it doesn't show when you click the Widget icon. Just pin a few things to force the news offscreen. I pinned Outlook, Weather, To-Do and Tips. Those 4 widgets fill the first pane that pops up when you click the Widget icon so you don't see the news. The useless news feed is still running, consuming bandwidth but at least I don't have to look. Hopefully Microsoft will fix this bad design soon and allow the user to completely turn off the news feed.

    Was this answer helpful?

    90+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments