How to Enable News and Interests Widget on Windows 10?

Recently a new update has been trending by windows to make its user more knowledgeable and aware. A new widget appears in the taskbar that is “News and Interests” in windows 10, next to the notification area. It starts with build 19043.962 and 21286 for version 21H1 or version 21H2 respectively, which have been specially designed by Windows to give quick access to its users for trending topics such as stocks, news, and weather information, and sports.

While for most of their work, people use to prefer laptop as it is convenient to use for office work rather than mobile phones. But in case, if anyone is habitual of, or wants to see some news headlines, weather reports, or stock information. So, the idea of this News and Interests feature is to keep you on your devices and get all the desired information from them instead of opening your phones to have a look at the news headlines and other information that has been going on in the world throughout the day.

This blog will try to answer the question of how to turn off News and Interests in Windows 10’s Taskbar, by showing you how to turn off the News app in the Windows 10 Start Menu Settings. It will cover how to turn off News and Interests in Cortana in Windows 10, too. Plus, it will spill the beans on how to turn off trending topics in Cortana in Windows 10.

Features of News and Interests widget

By MSN and Microsoft News, you’ll see a curated news feed and local weather conditions powered, on your taskbar. You can find this News and Interests icon in the taskbar of Windows 10, but it will appear as an icon that will be showing the current weather, but when you hover over the weather, you will be able to view news headlines, sports scores, and traffic updates. If you want to read any headline in detail then click on the news headline link and then you will be taken to Microsoft’s Edge browser page where you will see the full story via.

You will find it to be a very useful feature if you like reading news headlines because you can now have at-a-glance weather on your taskbar, as well as news updates just a click away. Although it is a good idea not everyone finds it to be useful as they may not be fond of reading news headlines or any other issues. This feature comes enabled by default, and it’s not something that everyone will like and want since it can add unnecessary distractions. If you think that you do not need this widget and is not for you, do not worry as there is a solution to it.

Windows 10 gives you the freedom of disabling or enabling the feature for its user to use it according to them in at least two ways either by using the taskbar settings or by using the registry. We are here with this guide to help you out in learning different steps by using which you will be able to disable or enable the taskbar news and interests widget available on Windows 10 build 21286 and higher releases.

Disabling of News and Interests widget on Windows 10

You can disable the News and Interests taskbar widget on Windows10 by using taskbar settings. Follow the steps mentioned below to disable this feature:

• First, right-click on Windows 10 taskbar.
• After that, you will see the menus bar, from that menu bar, move your cursor on the “News and Interests” option.
• Again you will see many options, click on the “Turn off” option from that menu bar.
• In case you don’t want to turn it off but you want to keep the widget using less space in the taskbar, you can select the “Show icon only” option for this purpose.

When you complete these above-mentioned steps in the taskbar, the widget will no longer be available in the taskbar.

Enabling of News and Interests widget on Windows 10

To enable the News and Interests widget in the taskbar using the taskbar settings, use these steps:

• Right-click the taskbar and you just need to reverse the steps which you did in disabling it.
• After that go to the “News and Interests” menu, and then click on the button named “Show icon and text”.

You will be able to see the widget in your taskbar after you complete the steps mentioned above.

Disabling of News and Interests widget using Registry

Now the second option comes is to disable the “News and Interests” taskbar widget  by using the Registry, use these steps:

[Warning: if system file modification is not done properly, it can further damage your Windows installation. It’s assumed that you have previously created a full backup of your computer you know well what you are doing. Use this as the last course of action and proceed with caution.

• Open Start from the left side of the display.
• Search for “Regedit” in the search bar and click the top result showing “Registry Editor” to open the Registry.
• Browse the following path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds

• Right-click the “Feeds” key and from the displayed submenus, select “New”.
• Select the “DWORD (32-bit) Value” option from the menu.
• Give the new name to the key “ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode” and if applicable, press Enter.
• Double-click the newly created key and make sure the value is set from 0 to 2 to disable the feature.
• Select OK.
• Now, restart your computer.

Once you complete the steps, the news widget will be disabled on your device.

Enabling of News and Interests widget using Registry

In the Windows 10 taskbar, if you want to enable the ”News and Interests” widget by using the registry. You just need to reverse the steps taken while disabling it. To enable it to follow the steps mentioned below:

• Open Start.
• Search for “Regedit” and click the top result to open the Registry as done previously.
• Browse the following path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds

• Now, do right-click the “Feeds” key, select the “New” option and choose the “DWORD (32-bit) Value”.
• Give the new name to the key “ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode”.
• After naming the new key, double-click that newly created key.
• To enable “News and Interests” by using the “Show icon and text” option. Make sure the value is set from 2 to 0.

Note: To enable News and Interests using the Show icon only option, double-click the newly created key and make sure the value is set from 2 to 1.

• Click OK.
• Now, restart the system.

You will be able to see the widget in your taskbar after you complete the steps mentioned above.

Conclusion

Did you know that in Windows 10, you can turn off specific news and interests in the taskbar? What we mean by this is that you can turn off the sports news and interest section in the Windows 10 taskbar and replace it with a different interest or news section. This way, if you didn’t want sports news and interest listed in your taskbar, you can replace it with something else so that it’s not taking up space.

News and Interests is an exciting feature by Windows, which many of the users find useful. But if you do not find it useful, no problem, this feature comes enabled by default but Windows 10 includes options to disable or enable the feature. In this article, you have seen how to enable and disable the News and Interests widget in at least two ways using the taskbar settings or registry.

So, in this blog, we will talk about how you can turn off news and interests from the taskbar in Windows 10. We have seen a lot of questions in forums and social media sites about how to stop news and interests from showing up in Windows 10. We will go over the direct way and the automated way to remove news and interests from the taskbar in Windows 10.

We hope you enjoyed our blog post about how to turn off news and interests in the Windows 10 taskbar. As always, if you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us! Thank you for reading, and have a great day!