Windows 10 News Feed: How to disable MSN News and Interests

Last Updated on: 31st August 2022, 07:56 am

Windows 10 has recently added a new taskbar news feed tool – something some people will definitely not be interested in making use of. So, for those people and those of us who just want a bit more taskbar space back, how can we get rid of Windows 10’s new feature for good?

What is the new Windows Microsoft 10 News feed?

The News and Interests Feed is an addition to Windows 10 that puts a small summary of the weather on your taskbar. If you hover over it or click it, it’ll bring up a larger, customisable news feed, complete with information on the current weather conditions, traffic nearby and recent news from various publications.

Clicking on any of the stories presented to you will open an MSN mirror for it in Microsoft Edge, rather than the third parties website that actually published the story in your preferred internet browser. This could be handy for some, and if you want to make use of it by all means feel free, it certainly looks like it could potentially be useful.

This also might make for a good way to avoid funding websites via advertisers if you don’t want to support them for whatever reason.

If you have no interest in using this addition to your Windows 10 taskbar and just want to be rid of it – or simply don’t like anything that insists on using Microsoft Edge – the process, fortunately, couldn’t be made much simpler than it is right now. Read on if you’d like to be free of this particular unwelcome addition to your taskbar.

The official name for the News Feed in Windows 10 is actually the MSN “news and interests” menu as a heads up, but that won’t really matter for very long because we’re going to get rid of it.

How do I get rid of the Windows 10 taskbar News and Interests feed?

If you’re not interested in the weather information and news headlines provided, you can disable news, interests and weather totally.

Simply right-click on the weather icon, mouse your cursor over the “news and interests” option in the pop-up menu, and select the “Turn off” option – you can also remove the degrees and simply keep the current weather icon by selecting icon only.

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I’ve included pretty much every step of the instructions in this single image above, so if you’re having difficulty following along, just reference the image provided.

Of course, if you’re not new to dealing Microsoft Windows, this sudden addition might not surprise you at all. You may just want to be rid of it.

Using this method hasn’t caused me any further issues after the removal at least, so it seems like Microsoft will actually respect your decision on this one.

If you end up wanting to enable news and interests again in the future, simply right click on the taskbar and do the same process again, selecting the show icon and text option in the context menu this time, which should cause the interests widget to return.

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Anything else to know about the Windows 10 News and Interests Widget?

That really is the entire process. Following these instructions should help you free up a little bit of blank space at the bottom of your screen. You can get rid of the Windows 10 taskbar newsfeed quite easily using this process, or at least shrink it down to just the icon and remove the out of place looking text.

You’re of course free to use it and start to edit and customise it for yourself instead, which I’m sure Microsoft would greatly prefer, and it might even make for a nice feature if you customise it enough that it turns into a personalized news feed.

However, plenty of users will have already sorted out their own ways of getting information about ongoing news and current weather conditions by now, which means this feature may well simply be a miss with a fair number of users.

As always, you can find more Tech-focused pieces on The Click right here, and more by me personally here.