Widgets

Windows 11 includes a focused Widgets experience on the Taskbar. This interface can display one or more widgets that are adaptive user interface cards that display dynamic, interactive, at-a-glance information from websites or apps installed on your PC.

Learn more: Windows 11 also displays widgets on the Lock screen.

Defaults

The Widgets button appears on the far left of the Taskbar and displays the local weather forecast by default.

Tip: If you configure the Taskbar to be left-aligned instead of its default central alignment, the Widgets button appears to the left of the system tray on the Taskbar.

When you click the Widgets button, a pop-up Widgets board appears in a floating window with a Widgets view displaying some selection of widgets. You can interact with most widgets in some way and access the underlying website or app to learn more.

Keyboard shortcut: You can also open Widgets by typing Windows key + W.

If you’ve used Windows 11 for some time, you may also see a second view, called Discover, which is accessible via the navigation pane on the left. When selected, this view displays the the Microsoft Start Feed, a dashboard of info cards for things like weather plus a bottomless pit of news and general information headlines in widget-like tiles that are usually of low quality. If you click a tile, the underlying web-based article will open in Microsoft Edge.

Widgets is a pop-up, glanceable interface. If you click outside of it, tap “Esc,” or type the Windows key + W keyboard shortcut, the Widgets board disappears.

Customize Widgets

Widgets is highly customizable. You can determine whether to display its Taskbar button in the Settings app by navigating to Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar items.

Tip: You can navigate to Taskbar settings more quickly by right-clicking an empty area on the Taskbar and choosing “Taskbar settings” from the context menu that appears.

Most other Widgets settings are customized directly in Widgets using a settings page. To access this interface, open Widgets and click the “Settings” (gear) icon.

Customize the Widgets button on the Taskbar

There are several options specifically tied to the Widgets button on the Taskbar.

Display Widgets more easily. The Widgets board appears when you click the Widgets button on the Taskbar by default. But you can also configure Widgets to display this interface more easily, simply by mousing over over the Widgets button. To do so, open Widgets, click the “Settings” (gear) icon, and enable the option “Open Widgets board on hover.”

Display more notifications on the Widgets button. The Widgets button on the Taskbar typically displays a weather forecast, though it will occasionally display a notification badge for important weather-related or news events. I don’t recommend this, but if you would like to see more notifications for some reason, Widgets can accommodate that need: Open Widgets, click the “Settings” (gear) icon and navigate to Notifications. Then, make sure both options in the Notification page are enabled.

Hide the Widgets button. If you don’t want to use Widgets and don’t like seeing its weather forecast on your Taskbar, you can hide the Widgets button. To do so, open the Settings app, navigate to Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar items, and configure “Widgets” to “Off.”

Keyboard shortcut: You can still open Widgets by typing Windows key + W even if you hide the Widgets button.

Customize the Widgets board

The Widgets board supports also several useful customization capabilities. Key among them:

Resize a widget on the Widgets board. While some widgets come in a single rectangular size (called Small), many support size options like Large, Medium, and Small. To resize a widget, click its “More options” (“…”) button and select the size you want (if available).

Reposition a widget on the Widgets board. You can reposition any widget on the Widgets board. But you can’t use drag and drop. Instead, click its “More options” (“…”) button, “Move widget,” and the direction you prefer. Yes, it’s tedious.

Remove a widget from the Widgets board. To remove a widget you don’t want, click its “More options” (“…”) button and choose “Remove.”

Customize a widget. Some widgets–most notably, Weather–can be customized to some degree. To do so, click its “More options” (“…”) button and choose “Customize Widget” to see which options are available.

Add a widget to the Widgets board. To add a new widget to the Widgets board, click the large “+” (“Add widgets”) button in its upper-right, select the widget you want, and click “+ Add widget.” You can also browse for more widgets in the Microsoft store by clicking “Find more widgets.”

Customize the Microsoft Start Feed

In addition to the Widget board, Widgets can display additional dashboards, one of which, the Microsoft Start Feed, is preinstalled but disabled by default.

Tip: Though the Widgets settings page says you can get more dashboards from the Microsoft Store, no one has ever bothered to create one. You can see this yourself by clicking the “Browse dashboards” button: This opens the Microsoft Store app to its Feed Providers for Widgets Board, which includes just a single item called Start Experiences App; that’s the app that provides the Widget board and the Microsoft Start Feed.

When enabled, the Microsoft Start Feed looks a lot like the Widgets board, but it works and is configured a bit differently. Each item it displays links to an article on the web, and if you click one, Microsoft Edge will open and navigate to that page in a new tab. This happens even if you configured another web browser as the default.

Learn more: I explain how to work around that problem later in this chapter.

It’s hardly worth discussing how one might customize this interface since most of this is futile. But here we go.

Enable the Microsoft Start Feed. I strongly recommend not enabling the Microsoft Start Feed as it of low quality and more distraction than useful. But if you just have to see it for yourself, open Widget settings and enable the very first option, “Discover.” When you do, a new “Discover” item appears at the top of the Widgets navigation bar. You can select that to view the Microsoft Start Feed. There are info cards at the top and then that bottomless pit of clickbait terribleness.

See more of the content you like. If you see a story you like, you can try to tilt the algorithm in your favor by clicking the “I like this” (thumbs up) icon in the top right of a content like. (This is not available for info cards.)

See less of the content you don’t like. If you see a story you don’t like, you can likewise click “See more” (“…”) in its tile and then choose “Not interested.” Info cards support a water-downed “Not interested option” instead.

Block a content source you never want to see again. If you see something truly objectionable, and you will, you can block a content source by clicking “See more” (“…”) in its tile and then choosing the “Block publisher” link that appears.

Personalize the feed further. To personalize the feed with the news and information topics and publishers you prefer and, more usefully, the info cards you want to see, click the “Personalize your feed” button that uses your profile picture if available.

Or don’t. The Microsoft Start Feed is terrible. But it’s also not the biggest problem here …

Fix the biggest problem with Widgets

In its new default configuration, Widgets is mostly innocuous. But if you enable the Microsoft Start Feed and click a news or information story tile, it forces you to use Microsoft Edge, even if you’ve configured another web browser as the default.

There is no option in Windows 11 to configure it to behave otherwise. Instead, you can use a third-party utility to undermine this terribleness. I recommend a free utility called MSEdgeRedirect.

When you install and run this useful app and are prompted to choose between three modes, select “Active Mode.” In the next admittedly confusing screen, just click “Install”. Then, click “Finish” to complete the installation.

Now, Windows 11 will respect your default web browser choice, even when you click a link in the Microsoft Start Feed in Widgets. It also works similarly with Search highlights, Copilot, the Get Help app, and other interfaces in Windows 11.