3 Easy Ways to Disable News and Interests in Windows 10

In Windows 10, there are three different ways to disable news and interests from the taskbar. The News and Interests features can be turned off using the Taskbar options, Group Policy, and the Registry.

Windows 10 version 21H1 introduced a new feature called “News and Interests” that offers a quick overview of key headlines and weather information relevant to you. Similarly, in Windows 11, Microsoft has added a weather widget icon to the taskbar as an entry point for widgets.

According to Microsoft, with news and interests, you get quick access to an integrated feed of dynamic content such as news and weather that updates throughout the day. If you don’t like this new feature addition and want to disable it, Microsoft provides a way to hide the News and Interests from the Taskbar.

Along with News and Interests, the task bar displays a day’s local weather forecast. The News and Interests icon when hovered over opens a window that provides quick access to a wealth of information.

Best Features of News and Interests

The Windows 10 taskbar’s News and Interests offers the following features:

• Keeping up to date: With news and interests from the Windows 10 taskbar, you get the latest headlines, weather, sports, and more. You have access to news and interesting content from over 4,500 global brands and even live weather maps.
• Personalize your feed: You can customize the content that you want to see and get rid of the ones that you don’t like or is unrelated to you. You can also use emoji to react to stories, which is a nice feature. When you click the refresh icon, the new content is displayed.
• Privacy Dashboard: Through news and interests, there is quick access to the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard. To access the privacy dashboard, hover the News and Interests icon and click three horizontal dots ... and select Privacy Dashboard. Through the Microsoft Edge browser, there are built-in controls to limit tracking from advertisers and third parties. And if news and interests doesn’t appeal to you, you can easily turn it off by right-clicking on the taskbar.

To personalize your feed, click Manage Interests. From the Discover Interests window, you can select what you want to see in the feed. There are wide range of topics per category.

If you want to get rid of News and Interests on the Windows 10 taskbar, there are 3 ways to disable or remove it from the Windows 10 taskbar.

Note: The below steps have been tested only on Windows 10 Professional and Enterprise editions.

Disable News and Interests from Windows 10 Taskbar

• Login to Windows 10 computer.
• Right click Windows 10 taskbar and click News and Interests.
• Select Turn off to disable News and Interests from Windows 10 taskbar.

Remove News and Interests using the Registry

The following steps can be used to remove News and Interests via Registry.

• Open Registry Editor by running regedit command.
• Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds.
• On the right side, double-click on ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode to modify the value data.
• Set the value to 2 to completely disable News and Interests.

After you make the above changes, log off and login back. You should now notice that the News and Interest doesn’t show on the taskbar anymore.

There are three values that you can specify for ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode and they are as follows.

• 0 – Shows icon and text
• 1 – Show only icon
• 2 – Hide News and Interests

Note: This method is for advanced users who know how to edit a registry and make the changes. I would recommend using the first method because it is easy to follow. If you still want to use the registry to turn off news and interests, ensure you back up the registry first.

Disable News and Interests using Group Policy

You can use Group Policy to disable News and Interest in Windows 10 taskbar.

• Open the Local Group Policy Editor by running the gpedit.msc command.
• Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > News and interests.
• On the right pane, double-click on the Enable news and interests on the taskbar policy.
• Select Disabled to turn off News and Interests feature.

Using the above steps, you’ve completely turned off News and Interests in Windows 10. For changes to take effect, close Local Group Policy Editor and restart your computer.

I have shared multiple methods to turn off the news and interest features in Windows 10. Kindly let me know if this guide has helped you by leaving a comment about your experience. Please like and share this guide to help others.