The Uninvited News Feed
Windows 11 introduced a Widgets Board — a sliding panel accessible from the taskbar that displays weather forecasts, stock tickers, sports scores, and a curated news feed powered by Microsoft Start. By default, hovering over or clicking the Widgets icon on the taskbar (or swiping from the left edge on a touchscreen) opens this panel. Many users find the Widgets Board distracting, particularly because the news feed frequently surfaces sensationalised clickbait headlines alongside legitimate weather information. On lower-powered machines, the Widgets panel also consumes noticeable system resources, as it runs a background Edge WebView process even when the panel is closed.
Disabling the Widgets Board
To stop Windows 11 from automatically showing the Widgets Board on your taskbar and prevent its background processes from consuming resources, you must disable the feature entirely through the Taskbar settings.
Open Settings (Win + I). In the left-hand sidebar, click on Personalisation. Select Taskbar. Under the “Taskbar items” section, you will see a toggle labelled Widgets. Turn this toggle off. The Widgets icon will immediately disappear from the taskbar, and the panel will no longer open when you hover over the left side of the taskbar or press Win + W. To ensure the background processes are also terminated, open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc), look for any processes named “Widgets” or “Windows Widgets,” right-click them, and select End task. With the toggle off, these processes will not restart on the next boot. If you are using a Group Policy-managed enterprise machine, your administrator can also disable Widgets via Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Widgets.