How to disable news and interest in Windows 11 widget

Anonymous

I want to keep the widget on my task bar, however I don't want the new stories to show. I've hide a bunch of them and they still end up showing, but I'm constantly having to hide them all since there are sooooo many. How do I disable the top stories, and the news and interest without turning off my widgets. I ONLY want the weather to show.

I've uninstalled microsoft news but I'm still seeing the news stories.

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Answer accepted by question author

Sumit 44,306 Volunteer Moderator

With the February update to Windows 11 - you have the option to disable MS start to feed from the Widget Settings. Requires Windows 11 23H2 at least.

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Anonymous

I would suggest that you completely remove the the Widgets app from your taskbar - see here -and pin the Weather App to Start / Taskbar.

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173 additional answers

Anonymous

I was wondering the same. Gosh how is it possible I can't remove this from my OS? I find this very disturbing. I don't need Windows to display news to me

EDIT:

I was able to remove the area with this:

1. Press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box. Now type regedit and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\

3. Select Microsoft key and right-click on it and select New -> Key option. Set the new key name as Dsh

4. Now select Dsh key and in right-side pane, right-click on empty area and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value option.

5. Set the new DWORD name as AllowNewsAndInterests and set its value to 0 to disable weather widget feature.

Source: https://www.askvg.com/tip-disable-or-remove-weather-widget-on-windows-11-taskbar/

now the widget area is gone altogether even if Widgets is selected from the Settings app.

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Anonymous

2022-09-12T07:10:46+00:00

100%!

I object to my computer being used to download and display news items that are clearly only intended to garner clicks from me and advertising money for Microsoft.
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Anonymous

2022-08-16T11:14:48+00:00

I got seriously annoyed and uninstalled the web experience pack - frankly no great loss, edge still works as does weather and calculator and pictures and never found any use for the other bits. It's a massive relief not to have the rubbish keep downloading in background and my laptop's performance has improved considerably. I'm using the stardock 11 alternative rather than the travesty that start had become (though none of their other stuff ) and am enjoying my quietly customised and much improved interface.

The intrusive nature of cortana and inking was such that I'd already disabled it for privacy reasons, keeping only the non-internet search facilities and I find I don't miss cortana and bing either ! DuckDuck and google are far more accurate search engines anyway - though google is slipping a lot and can't find some material/innocuous images from even a few weeks ago. It becomes ever harder to exclude sponsored items from searches. In Amazon, Bing and Google searches I find that the NOT and ! and - operators are frequently disregarded altogether when it comes to sponsored items.
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