How to Remove Weather / News Widget from Windows 11 Taskbar?

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Every Windows 11 update brings its share of new features, good or new. Let’s take a closer look at a new widget introduced by Google in its latest update  and especially how to disable this widget, presenting the weather and news, named News and Fields of Interest that is displayed in the Windows taskbar.

SUMMARY

What’s the News and Weather Widget?

I was a little surprised today during the post-upgrade reboot of my computer under Windows 10 with the appearance on the right of my taskbar (the location at the bottom of the screen where shortcuts to your favorite software and applications are placed but also the time, the volume icon etc.).

Here is the new feature introduced by Microsoft in the taskbar: it is a shortcut to news articles targeted according to your interests, but also the weather forecast of your city, traffic updates, the stock market etc. By default, the weather is displayed.

How to Remove Weather and News Widget on Windows 11 Taskbar

Some people might find this weather/info widget, and the information it contains, convenient. Honestly, it’s not my choice and I like to customize my PC display myself, whether it’s the wallpaper, the language bar or the dark/light mode of Windows 11. Fortunately, the News and Fields of Interest widget is easily disabled, here’s how to go about disabling it:

  1. Right-click on the Windows 11 taskbar.
  2. Click on News and Fields of Interest and then select Disable in the pop-up window.

Note that there are some additional settings for this News and Interest widget:

  • Show icon only: instead of having the widget displayed as a tab in the Windows 11 taskbar with the icon and text, it is possible to have a simple icon on the left of the notification area.
  • Open on hover: change the widget opening behavior (hover or click)

Change the Display of the News and Interest Widget via Registry Editor

Note that there is also a registry key that allows you to modify the display or not of this widget: you just have to modify the following registry key via the registry editor:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionFeeds

The value 0 allows to display the icon and the text of the concerned widget, 1 displays just the icon and 2 allows to hide the widget.

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