Microsoft has finished testing its News and Interest taskbar widget. Microsoft says will begin rolling out to customers over the next several weeks. First it will be included in April 2021 cumulative update preview for Windows 10. After that it will become available to everyone via May 2021 cumulative updates.
News and Interest is a small taskbar panel that shows a weather forecast, news headlines, finances, traffic, and other information when expanded. Since December 2020, this feature is available on the taskbar for those running Windows 10 preview builds from Dev Channel.
Earlier, Microsoft revealed its plans to make the widget available to stable versions of Windows 10. The company named version 21H1, 20H2, and 2004 as releases that will get the News and Interest feature.
Here is what the company said in the official announcement:
News and interests on the Windows taskbar will begin rolling out to customers over the next several weeks. We are taking a phased and measured approach and broad availability will occur in the coming months. On behalf of the Microsoft team, I’d like to extend a heart-felt thank you to our Windows Insiders who have provided feedback to help improve the experience. The team is listening, and will be looking forward to hearing additional feedback. To share your thoughts with the team, when you have a chance to try it out, drop us a line in the Feedback Hub.
After installing the updates, you can enable or disable News and Interests. It will automatically open when you hover the mouse pointer over the weather icon on the taskbar. If case you dislike this behavior, you can disable it.
Interestingly, Microsoft Edge includes a similar, widget. It is currently hidden by default, but you can create a shortcut to News Widget in Microsoft Edge using a dedicated guide.
Support us
Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options: