News and Interests feature was Introduced with Windows 10, version 1909 and later device versions. It’s also available as a widget on Windows 11 devices. According to Microsoft, this feature was introduced to provide quick access to weather, news and the information which is relevant to you.
This widget is customizable and can be controlled on Windows devices using Settings app. This is a great feature overall but not so great for Enterprise users who may not use this widget most of the time.
At the end of this blog post, I have also provided the steps with screenshots to disable News and Interest Widget manually on a Windows 10 and Windows 11 device.
Steps to disable News and Interests from taskbar using Intune
I will be creating a Device configuration profile to disable News and Interests widget on Windows 10/11 devices using Intune admin center. Let’s check the policy details and how to assign it to end user devices.
- Login on Microsoft Intune admin center
- Click on Devices > Configuration profiles
- Click on + Create profile
- Platform: Windows 10 and later
- Profile type: Settings Catalog
Basics
Provide a Name and Description of the Policy to Identify it on Microsoft Intune admin center.
- Name: Disable News and Interests on Windows
- Description: This policy will disable News and Interests widget on windows devices
Configuration settings
Click on + Add settings and then search for news and interest in the settings picker. You will find two settings Feeds and Widgets and select select “Enable News and Interests” and “Allow Widgets“.
If you organization contains only Windows 10 devices, select Feeds > Enable News and Interests setting only. Allow Widget setting is for Windows 11 devices.
After you select the settings you want to configure, Configure Enable News and Interests setting and Allow Widgets setting and set it to Not allowed.
Enable News and Interests will target Windows 10 devices and Allow Widgets setting will target Windows 11 devices.
Assignments
Create an Azure AD Security group which contains users or devices where this device configuration profile needs to be deployed. If you prefer a more controlled deployment to specific devices only, then make sure to target only devices via Azure AD group. Once your testing is successful and you want to deploy this script on all Organization devices, you can click on + Add all devices.
I have added an Azure AD group called Cloudinfra Windows devices which contains windows 10 and windows 11 devices.
Review + Create
On Review + Create tab, review the device configuration profile details and click on Create. As soon as you click on create button, The device configuration profile deployment process to disable News and Interest widget on Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices will start.
Intune Policy Refresh Cycle
The Device will Sync / Check in to start Device configuration profile deployment. It may take some time for the process to start. Therefore, if you are testing it on a test device, you can force initiate Intune refresh cycle on the device which will speed up the download and configuration process. You can also use Powershell to force initiate Intune refresh cycle.
Also, you can restart the device first which also starts the device check-in process. Manual sync is not mandatory on user’s devices as the device check-in process happens automatically. But if you are testing this setting on a test device then this can speed up your testing and can save some time.
Monitoring of Device Configuration profile
You can check the status of device configuration profile from Intune admin center by following below steps:
- Login on Microsoft Intune admin center
- Click on Devices > Configuration profiles
- Click on the Device configuration profile and on the top of the page you find quick view of Success, Failure, Conflict, Not Applicable and In Progress status.
- Click on View report to find more details about the status of Device configuration profile.
End user Experience
After we have applied this policy on Intune managed devices. Let’s check the status and see if it has been applied as per the device configuration profile.
After device check-in process completes, the policy will be applied to disable News and Interests widget on Windows 10 device. To check and confirm it, you will see that the News and Interest setting in Settings app is turned off and not configurable any more / greyed out.
On a Windows 10 device, follow below steps to check and confirm:
- Press Windows + I to open settings app
- Click on Personalization > Taskbar
- Scroll down on the page to find News and Interests settings
On a Windows 11 device, follow below steps to check and confirm
- Press Windows + I to open settings app
- Click on Personalization > Taskbar
- Widgets will be turned off and greyed out
Disable News and Interests from Windows 10 taskbar manually
Please follow below steps to disable News and Interests Widget manually on Windows 10 devices
- Press Windows + I to open settings app
- Click on Personalization > Taskbar
- Scroll down on the page to find News and Interests settings
- Toggle off the setting “Show news and interests on the taskbar”
Instead of going to Settings app and disabling News and Interests, you can also right-click on the taskbar and find News and Interests option then click on Turn off to disable News and Interest Widget from taskbar on a Window 10 device.
Disable News and Interests from Windows 11 taskbar manually
Please follow below steps to disable News and Interests Widget manually on Windows 11 devices
- Press Windows + I to open settings app
- Click on Personalization > Taskbar
- Toggle off Widgets setting under Taskbar Items
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
1. Disable News and Interests taskbar widget using registry
You can disable News and Interests widget on Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices by performing below changes in Windows registry.
Disable News and Interests taskbar widget for All users on Windows 10 devices using Registry
Please make sure you have administrator rights before following this procedure on your device:
- Press Windows key + R together to open Run dialog box
- Type regedit and press enter to open Windows registry editor. Alternatively you can Go to Start and search for Registry Editor and click on it to open.
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Feeds and on the right hand side Update EnableFeeds registry entry value to 0 to disable News and Interests from taskbar.
- Restart your Windows 10 device so that this change could take effect.
Disable News and Interests taskbar widget for one user on Windows 10 device using Registry
EnableFeeds registry entry will disable News and Interest widget on device level which will be applicable for all users who will sign-in on the device. If you do not want to disable News and Interest for all users then you can make a change in HKCU registry level for that user rather than HKLM registry level. Let’s check the steps:
- Press Windows key + R together to open Run dialog box
- Type regedit and press enter to open Windows registry editor. Alternatively you can Go to Start and search for Registry Editor and click on it to open.
- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds and update ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode registry entry value to 2.
- User will have to Sign-out and Sign back in on Windows device so that this change could take effect.
Disable News and Interests taskbar widget for All users on Windows 11 device using Registry
In the previous sections, we saw how to disable News and Interests widget on Windows 10 device. I have provided the setting for All users (device level) and also One user as well. Let’s check how to disable News and Interest for all users on a Windows 11 device using registry editor.
- Press Windows key + R together to open Run dialog box
- Type regedit and press enter to open Windows registry editor. Alternatively you can Go to Start and search for Registry Editor and click on it to open.
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Dsh and create a new DWORD (32-bit) registry entry called AllowNewsAndInterests and set its value to 0. This will disable News and Interest widget for all users. AllowNewsAndInterests registry entry may already exist for you so you don’t have to create it, just set its value to 0 to disable it.
- Restart your Windows 11 device so that this change could take effect.
- After device is restarted, you can go to Settings App > Personalization > Taskbar and check Widgets taskbar Item will be disabled and greyed out. As we have created registry setting in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE level, it will be applicable for all users on this device.
Conclusion
In this blog post, we have seen different ways to disable News and Interests widget on Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices. More specifically we have discussed on the Intune policy which can disable it on all organization devices.
You can also use registry editor to disable News and Interests widget. For more granular control on news and interests widget you can use HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds registry key and registry entries to customize it.
Another option to disable News and Interest widget is to create a powershell script which will target the registry keys we discussed in this blog post to disable News and Interests widget on Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices.