Windows 11 includes a feature called the “News and Interests” widget (sometimes referred to simply as “Widgets” or the weather icon). By default, it lives in the bottom-left corner of your taskbar. It displays the current temperature, but if you accidentally hover your mouse over it, a massive, screen-filling panel explodes outward, bombarding you with tabloid news articles, stock market tickers, and celebrity gossip.
For users who want a clean, distraction-free desktop environment, this feature is incredibly annoying. Furthermore, the widget constantly runs background processes (like msedgewebview2.exe) to fetch the latest news, silently consuming RAM and network bandwidth even when you aren’t looking at it. To reclaim your taskbar and improve system performance, you can completely block and remove the widget.
How to Completely Block the Windows 11 News and Interests Widget
You must turn off the Widgets toggle within the Windows 11 Taskbar personalization settings.
- Right-click anywhere on the empty space of your taskbar at the bottom of the screen.
- A small pop-up menu will appear. Click on Taskbar settings.
- The main Settings window will open, directly focused on the “Taskbar items” section.
- You will see a list of icons that are currently allowed to live on your taskbar, such as Search, Task view, and Widgets.
- Locate the toggle switch next to Widgets (which controls the News and Interests panel).
- Click the switch so it slides to the left and turns grey (Off).
The moment you click the switch, the weather icon will instantly vanish from the bottom-left corner of your screen. Windows will also gracefully terminate the background news-fetching processes, freeing up your system resources and ensuring you never accidentally trigger the massive distraction panel again.