How to disable news and interest in Windows 11 widget

Anonymous
2021-10-22T20:48:56+00:00

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.

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Settings

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Sumit 44,306 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2024-02-23T11:57:06+00:00

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
2021-10-24T20:11:33+00:00

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

Standard Disclaimer: There are links to non-Microsoft websites in this reply. The pages appear to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the sites that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). Thoroughly research any product advertised on the sites before you decide to download and install it.

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-12-07T14:11:57+00:00

    It looks like this is finally on the way to becoming reality.

    Microsoft is about to fix the widget board's biggest flaw | Windows Central

    • Microsoft will soon let you disable the news feed within the widgets board on Windows 11.
    • The change is in testing among Windows Insiders, though it is rolling out gradually.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-03-15T16:23:04+00:00

    Stop and think for a moment about how terribly ironic this is. They place a massive, obvious disclaimer that a link in a forum reply leads to a safe, accurate, relevant, but non-microsoft website, meanwhile their primary operating system and software product will fill your screen with information and images from a wide variety of unsafe, irreputable, and most certainly irrelevant and non-microsoft websites at a single keystroke or a flick of the finger with absolutely zero warning, disclaimer, or ability to stop the computer from accessing said sites. I can only interpret this disclaimer as a sarcastic insult to those of us who have not seen enough to switch to linux yet.

    Edit: There is a way to uninstall the widgets program entirely, thank goodness, though it is in no way obvious or accessibly to 95% of users. Running the command winget uninstall "windows web experience pack" in cmd or powershell as administrator appears to run a clean uninstall. Something like this ought to at least appear in the applications list so that it can be uninstalled through settings like most apps.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-09-10T10:37:56+00:00

    I like the widgets, or at least I like their potential. There are many nice and useful things that developers could accomplish with it, to both personalize Windows and improve your workflow. I just don't like the news widget that's forced on me. There should be an easy way to disable it, aside from Microsoft's recommendation of hiding the widget menu altogether... Honestly, I don't even see how that is a solution when it is still fetching the data behind the scenes.

    Personally, I regret upgrading to Windows 11. There's all this stuff I never asked for and to me, it's just clutter. I'd also rather be the one in control of what my machine grabs from the web and displays... it's still my machine, right? Of course, I could downgrade to another Windows version, at least for now anyway. However, that won't be supported in the future as previous Windows generations have shown us and you'll be forced to upgrade anyway.  Wouldn't it be a whole lot nicer if Microsoft just left you yourself in charge of what you see or don't see...

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