Windows 11 features a built-in Weather widget (often referred to as “News and interests”) pinned to the far-left side of your taskbar. While seeing the current temperature at a glance is useful for some, accidentally hovering your mouse over it instantly summons a massive, distracting panel filled with tabloid news, celebrity gossip, and stock market updates. If you prefer a clean, professional desktop environment, you can easily disable this widget entirely.
How to Hide the Taskbar Widget
You can turn off the entire Widgets panel directly from the Windows Settings app.
- Right-click on any empty space on your Taskbar (do not click on an app icon).
- Select Taskbar settings from the small pop-up menu.
- The Settings app will open directly to the “Taskbar items” section.
- Look for the option labelled Widgets in the list.
- Click the toggle switch next to it to turn it Off.
The weather icon will immediately vanish from your taskbar. Not only does this clean up your screen visually, but it also prevents the underlying Widgets.exe process from constantly fetching news articles and consuming your system’s RAM and internet bandwidth in the background.