Add or Remove News and Interests Button from Taskbar in Windows 10

How to Add or Remove News and Interests Button from Taskbar in Windows 10

Starting in Windows 10 Build 21286, Microsoft has added a new News and Interests widget to the taskbar. You way want to know how to add, remove, or customize its appearance.

In Windows 10 Build 21286, Microsoft has added a new button that opens a flyout that reminds of the new tab page in the Edge browser. It contents is a news feed that also includes weather forecast, and it updates dynamically throughout the day. Once you hover over the button, a flyout appears with a personalized news feed.

The company finds this solution a useful alternative to news apps, sites, and smartphone apps. It allows you to see the actual info with one click without opening anything extra or switching to a mobile device.

Note that Microsoft is running the A/B testing with this feature. So, at the moment of this writing it is not available to everyone. Microsoft says that it will be initially available to Windows Insiders in United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and India. But the good news is that you can activate the News and Interests feature and have it enabled for your right now:

Activate or Deactivate News and Interests Button in Taskbar in Windows 10

This post will show you how to add or remove the News and Interests button from the taskbar in Windows 10. This assumes that you have activated the feature manually, or have it available by default for you user account.

To Add News and Interests Button to Taskbar

1. Right-click anywhere on the empty space on the taskbar.
2. From the menu, select either News and interests > Show icon and text or Show icon only (default).
3. The icon will appear in the taskbar to the left of the notification area.
4. If you select the Show icon and text option, you will have the icon with the current weather temperature.

You are done.

Similarly to the above, you can remove the the News and Interests button from the taskbar.

To Remove News and Interests Button from Taskbar

1. Right-click the empty space on the taskbar.
2. Select News and interests > Hidden from the context menu.
3. The icon is now removed from the taskbar.

You are done.

Finally, you can add or remove the news feed control from the taskbar in the Registry.

Add or Remove News and Interests from Taskbar in Registry

1. Open the Registry Editor app.
2. Go to the following Registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds. See how to go to a Registry key with one click.
3. On the right, modify or create a new 32-Bit DWORD value ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode. Note: Even if you are running 64-bit Windows you must still create a 32-bit DWORD value.
4. Set its value data to one of the following values:
   • 0 = Show icon and text
   • 1 = Show only icon
   • 2 = Hide everything
5. To make the changes done by the Registry tweak take effect, you need to sign out and sign in to your user account. Alternatively, you can restart the Explorer shell.

You are done.

To save your time, you can download the following Registry files.

Download Registry Files

The included files are:

• Add News and Interests Icon.reg
• Add News and Interests Icon with Text.reg
• Remove News and Interests from taskbar.reg

Finally, you can add or remove the News and Interests taskbar feature using the Local Group Policy. Here's how it can be done.

Add/remove News and Interests from taskbar with Local Group Policy Editor

To add or remove the News and Interests from taskbar with Local Group Policy Editor, do the following.

1. Open the Local Group Policy Editor.
2. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > News and interests in the left pane.
3. On the right, double-click on the Enable news and interests on the taskbar policy.
4. Set it do Disabled to disable it for all users.
5. Set it either to Not Configured or Enabled to make it available to all users.
6. Restart Windows 10 to apply the changes.

You are done.

Finally, if your Windows 10 edition doesn't include the Local Group Policy Editor app (gpedit.msc), or you need to configure the policy directly in the Registry, follow the instructions below.

Enable/Disable News and Interests using a Group Policy Registry tweak

1. Open the Registry Editor app.
2. Go to the following Registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Feeds.
3. On the right, modify or create a new 32-Bit DWORD value EnableFeeds.
4. Set to do 0 to disable News and Interests for all users.
5. Otherwise, set it to 1 or remove the EnableFeeds value.

For your convenience, you can download the following Registry files:

Download Group Policy Registry files

They will automate the above described process for you.

That's it.

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