After testing this new feature for the past few months, Microsoft said today that it is bringing the News and Interests flyout to all supported Windows 10 versions.
“As people spend more time on their Windows PCs, working, learning, connecting, and creating, we’re making it easier to access personalized content that is available at a glance and updated throughout the day,” Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman announced. “News and interests on the Windows 10 taskbar will begin rolling out to customers over the next several weeks.”
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For those unfamiliar, News and Interests is a pop-up news feed that will sit on the Windows 10 taskbar by default, though users can disable it if desired. Why Microsoft would bother with such a feature is unclear, and I feel like this will simply be yet another feature that most Windows 10 users disable until Microsoft finally kills it off.
But I’m sure some will love it. Indeed, Microsoft claims that “many” have asked for this feature.
T182
<p>Welp, going to need another PowerShell script to disable that too. </p>
MadsM
<blockquote><em><a href="#624339">In reply to T182:</a></em></blockquote><p>You can turn it off in two seconds.</p>
winner
<blockquote><em><a href="#624363">In reply to MadsM:</a></em></blockquote><p>Just add it to the other 100 items you need to turn off upon initial configuration.</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/249401/microsoft-is-launching-news-and-interests-in-windows-10#624375" target="_blank"><em>In reply to Winner:</em></a></p><p>Every new Insider build is another opportunity to enjoy spending a few minutes using <strong>takeown</strong>, <strong>icacls</strong> and <strong>rd /s /q</strong> to purge the cruft yet again. Batch files are still useful things.</p>
will
Premium Member<p>Maybe they could bring back Active Desktop, or the personalized Today view in Outlook. </p><p><br></p><p>I think having a way to see my day at a glance, with weather and tasks/calendar would be better IMO. This is ok but it can become a time suck as well. Edge does all this now when you open the browser.</p>
mebby
<p>I see this will be turned "on" for default Win10 installations per "…<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">will sit on the Windows 10 taskbar by default, though users can disable it if desired." I guess they need to turn it on otherwise most people will never use it. Because they don't know it exists. Most of the people I know that use Windows will never use a feature that you have to turn on.</span></p><p><br></p><p>For my part I am looking forward to trying this out.</p>
bart
Premium Member<p>I would much rather see a more interactive desktop. It's a wasteland at the moment. Opening up the desktop and seeing my news and interests immediately would make more sense to me.</p>
VancouverNinja
Premium Member<blockquote><em><a href="#624345">In reply to Bart:</a></em></blockquote><p>That is not a bad idea.</p>
will
Premium Member<blockquote><em><a href="#624345">In reply to Bart:</a></em></blockquote><p>Going full circle back to Windows 98 and Active Desktop…</p>
darkgrayknight
Premium Member<blockquote><em><a href="#624371">In reply to will:</a></em></blockquote><p>That was actually great back then. I made my own custom html page with all kinds of helpful utilities. Doing that today would be great with the many APIs, JSON, jQuery, etc. that is available now.</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/249401/microsoft-is-launching-news-and-interests-in-windows-10#624345" target="_blank"><em>In reply to Bart:</em></a></p><p>Put a url link for your preferred online news aggregator in <strong>%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup</strong> or consider Rainlendar.</p>
sherlockholmes
Premium Member<p>They never learn. Sad. </p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/249401/microsoft-is-launching-news-and-interests-in-windows-10#624346" target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em>In reply to SherlockHolmes:</em></a></p><p>If MSFT derives revenues from this, you expect MSFT to <strong><em>unlearn</em></strong> the lesson <em>money good</em>?</p>
psi
Premium Member<p>I'm sure we won't end up with Ads in the feed…. That's not what this is about is it…</p>
Scsekaran
<blockquote><em><a href="#624348">In reply to Psi:</a></em></blockquote><p>Ads are the whole point of this. There is already News app in the store which provide similar information</p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium MemberYou’re sure. 🙂 Sure you are.
glenn8878
<p>News is already in the Edge browser. There's multiple ways to get news. It's not like there's a lack of news except you can't get conservative news anymore due to bans (okay, I said it).</p>
drew neilson
<blockquote><em><a href="#624360">In reply to glenn8878:</a></em></blockquote><p>There shouldn't be conservative news nor liberal news nor centrist news. There should simply be <em>news, </em>with facts. People shouldn't confuse <em>news </em>with <em>opinion-editorial (op-ed). </em>They also shouldn't put themselves into filter bubbles, where they only hear opinion-editorial from people whom they agree with.</p>
glenn8878
<blockquote><em><a href="#624406">In reply to Drew Neilson:</a></em></blockquote><p>All the current mainstream news is not unbiased. It's a bubble. There's no unbiased news today. </p>
darkgrayknight
Premium Member<blockquote><em><a href="#624411">In reply to glenn8878:</a></em></blockquote><p>But there are people who wish there was just news that presented the facts, without the biased commentary.</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/249401/microsoft-is-launching-news-and-interests-in-windows-10#624411" target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em>In reply to glenn8878:</em></a></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">There's no unbiased news today.</span></blockquote><p>There is if you're willing to restrict yourself to Reuters, AP, UPI and <strong>US News & World Report</strong> and maybe a few sites outside the US. If you want unbiased news, you have to <strong>read</strong> it. There are no unbiased TV or radio news programs.</p>
bettyblue
<blockquote><em><a href="#624459">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>I would easily argue that Reuters is biased.</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/249401/microsoft-is-launching-news-and-interests-in-windows-10#624489" target="_blank"><em>In reply to bettyblue:</em></a></p><p>Reuters has editorials and opinion pieces, which aren't news per se. The actual news pieces are fairly neutral. And it's a better wire service for news outside the US than AP.</p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium MemberPlease don’t. Easily or otherwise.
codymesh
<blockquote><a href="#624406"><em>In reply to glenn8878:</em></a></blockquote><p>yeah there is no unbiased news, like for example stuff like "climate change is real", huge liberal bias there, what we really need is the conservative angle where people go like "clean coal will help us deal with climate change" or even go straight to "climate scientists are owned by china"</p><p><br></p><p>(satirical comment, just in case it wasn't clear)</p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium MemberSo, climate change is real. That’s not bias, it’s fact.
Greg Green
<blockquote><em><a href="#624406">In reply to Drew Neilson:</a></em></blockquote><p>Reporters, biographers, and documentarians all have agendas now. I don’t know if it’s coming from the journalism schools or growing naturally, but few seem to able to just tell the story as it happened.</p><p><br></p><p>I remember more than a decade ago when print reporter <span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Johnny Apple passed, the esteemed David Broder said Apple was one of the few journalists he knew who just wanted tell people what happened, not why it happened. Broder laughed as if this was old fashioned.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">as a former nature documentary lover I’m amazed at how many ‘nature’ documentaries are now more about the cameraman or ‘scientist’ than the environment they’re filming,, as well as how many now have staged scenes or different events spliced together to convey the agenda. The documentaries often have disclaimers at the end of the show saying some muddled thing.</span></p>
reesecupsftw
<p>I kind of like this feature. The weather function is useful. I think I would love it if I could customize it like an RSS feed. </p>
jmeiii75
Premium Member<p>I was almost expecting to see "…for some reason" in the headline. I always appreciate that.</p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium Member🙂
ames
Premium Member<p>So this is 21H1 and going forward?</p>
madthinus
Premium Member<blockquote><em><a href="#624369">In reply to Ames:</a></em></blockquote><p>1909 and forward</p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium MemberAll supported versions of Windows 10. So 1909 and newer.
bluvg
<p>Windows Sidebar reborn</p>
navarac
<p>Got it in 21H1, Hate it, Disabled it. MS News is the pits. News and Interests is neither newsworthy or interesting in the least, but pure rubbish and belongs with 3D Paint etc. In the Rubbish Bin..</p>
PhilipVasta
<blockquote><em><a href="#624372">In reply to navarac:</a></em></blockquote><p>MS News is terrible. It's very low-quality and strewn with clickbait ads.</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/249401/microsoft-is-launching-news-and-interests-in-windows-10#624372" target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em>In reply to navarac:</em></a></p><p>Bing News must generate $$$ for MSFT, so it's likely to become more intrusive over time.</p>
winner
<p>Windows 10, Flyout Edition.</p>
wunderbar
Premium Member<p>Honestly I'll leave this enabled just for the weather information in the taskbar. I won't ever click it for anything, but I like the weather information.</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/249401/microsoft-is-launching-news-and-interests-in-windows-10#624376" target="_blank"><em>In reply to wunderbar:</em></a></p><p>FWIW, many Linux desktop environments provide a weather widget for their panels. Hover you mouse over them, and they show weather details in at most a 200×125 pixel box. Odd that there are more options for Linux than Windows in this area.</p>
dxtremebob
Premium Member<p>I like it.</p>
ghostrider
<p>..and that's another prime location for ads. Just sayin'.</p><p><br></p><p>The amount of things you now need to turn off of or disable in Win10 is growing by the day!</p>
samp
<p>If this can be configure to show news and interests I like (maybe using some cool AI to get articles from any website you enter, and perhaps show social media as well), I think it would become very popular. </p><p><br></p><p>On a phone, many repeatedly pull down to see new notifications in the notification centre. Although it also shows system notifications (what's now in the action centre on Windows), what many are looking for is updates from social media, websites and news and that kind of thing. </p><p>If this Windows feature competes with that (rather than just showing news from certain outlets), It will likely be a success.</p><p><br></p><p>It will be deviating more from what the hardcore base wants (which is nothing – literally), but will be competing in the public sector more, where now connivance rules.</p>
ebraiter
<p>To many places to get the new and whatever. Disabling time!</p><p>Should be out of Windows 10 by v23H2.</p>
Michael_Miller
<p>I know it is fashionable to be negative about most things Microsoft on this website, but I will like it when it becomes available. </p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium MemberWhat a weird and unfair criticism. Unless you mean the commenters, lol, then yes.
I think of this website as being clear-headed and fair when it comes to assessing what Microsoft does. And not some extreme of cheerleading on one side and blind disgust or even rage on the other. But I guess I would think that.
spewak
Premium Member<p>I had the feature in an earlier build on my main computer but had to roll the OS back due to some program loading issues.</p><p>On my other computer, it is enabled and I rather fancy it.</p>
nbplopes
<p>Another feature for the do more slow people that will soon be moved out of place if not removed. MS suffers from the fact that it does not have a smartphone OS. People today consume these flash news from their smartphones.</p><p><br></p><p>Wasn’t the so called tiles the place? I guess its moving out of fashion gradually. Soon we’ll be back to Windows Vista/7, just a different theme.</p>
mike2k
<p>The problem investing in any new “feature” MS puts out there, is the fact they’ll kill it off if you love it and leave you no way to disable it if it’s trash. Lose lose </p>
bettyblue
<blockquote><em><a href="#624426">In reply to mike2k:</a></em></blockquote><p>So very true.</p>
Username
<p><em>> “many” have asked for this feature.</em></p><p><br></p><p>who asked for this? Honestly, was it some intern’s project?</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/249401/microsoft-is-launching-news-and-interests-in-windows-10#624430" target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em>In reply to Username:</em></a></p><p>Who asked for Windows 8?</p><p>I figure MSFT receives money from the top sites which appear most often. If so, it's the $$$s demanding this.</p>
Greg Green
<blockquote><em><a href="#624458">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>Good point. It’s a way for news sites to advertise themselves.</p>
cnc123
<p>I think they're moving informational live tiles here as the kill them on the Start menu.</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p>I believe it can only be hidden, not disabled.</p><p>I'd love to see the telemetry on the % of Insider build users who've hidden it.</p><p><strong><em>ADDED:</em></strong> terminology: right-click on the taskbar, click on the news entry in the popup menu, and the item is labeled <em>Turn off</em>, but I listed running processes and services before and after 'disabling'. No difference. Nothing running while News & Interests appears on the taskbar ceases running when it's 'disabled'. Maybe it just hooks into the Edge background process which always seems to be running whether Edge is open or not, whether one uses a different browser as the default browser.</p>
jupast
<p>Or, they could have done something with Live Tiles like letting us pin the ones we want to the desktop, now that might actually be useful. But then, this is a company that has a Sticky Notes app that does't allow you to pin those to the desktop, which makes total sense for 'sticky notes', or even minimize it to the sys tray.</p><p><br></p><p>May as well write the article about this new feature being taken out of Windows in a year or two.</p>
jimchamplin
Premium Member<blockquote><em><a href="#624449">In reply to jupast:</a></em></blockquote><p>I think something more like the sidebar in Vista and 7 would be better. The desktop is immediately covered once I start using the PC, so having them there would make them equally as useful as them being on Start. Still a click away, and since I’ve trained myself not to hit that button on the bottom right for years, I’d rather just leave them on Start.</p><p><br></p><p>If you use the desktop as a launcher, I guess it’s different. For some reason, I never did that. I have nothing on the desktop. Not even Recycle Bin.</p>
kjb434
Premium Member<p>I just means there are more tiles i can eliminate from the start screen. At this point I don't really need the start screen.</p>
j5
Premium Member<p>Is this supposed to compete with Mac's Big Sur widgets? They also pop out on the right side of the screen.</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p>I just activated it to see what it provides. I clicked through all its news/interests providers until it wrapped back to the beginning, and it doesn't show my own top news sites. [I don't give a rat's ass about <em>interests</em>.] No Economist, no Los Angeles Times (indeed, no West Coast newspaper, not even the Seattle Post-Intelligencer), no Reuters, no AP, no UPI.</p><p>It does have Politico, The Hill, Washington Post, New York Times, The Week, and US News & World Report, so there is something, just not my preferred sources.</p><p>IOW, I consider this rubbish because I can't ENTER my own sources, I can only use what MSFT provides (which appears to be SQUAT ALL for outside the US, <em>quelle surpise!</em>), so my speculation that MSFT gets paid to be included as a source seems more likely.</p><p><strong><em>ADDED:</em></strong> if I go into Edge, there are more sources, including LA Times, Reuters, AP and some other West Coast papers. Also some UK papers, but not the Economist. And customization appears limited to opting out rather than opting in.</p>
bettyblue
<p>When will the learn? They finally get rid of the 3D stuff no one used, and half a dozen built in apps that no one ever used since the launch of Windows 10 only to add this?</p><p><br></p><p>Also please stop updating Edge so much. I feel like I am getting twice a week updates and stuff is starting to break. FireFox I might be coming back.</p>
codymesh
<blockquote><em><a href="#624487">In reply to bettyblue:</a></em></blockquote><p>Edge's update schedule follows the chromium project</p>
bettyblue
<blockquote><em><a href="#624493">In reply to codymesh:</a></em></blockquote><p>I get it but recently, say the last 8 weeks its kind of crazy. Plus they have made some changes for change sake, like the download pop out at the top right, history was totally changed and we have had some page rendering issues of late. A few days ago I could not download a needed update from VMware because the drop down would not render properly. I had to open the page in Safari on my Mac, which tradtionally is the issue. Had the same issue on Windows and FireFox worked.</p>
codymesh
<p>eh, I guess if Google can put a feed on basically every phone then this gets a pass too. IMO, we really should thank dormant antitrust action for this.</p><p><br></p><p>Even though this is small, despite all the recent improvements in removing inbox apps, this will make people feel like Microsoft is yo-yo-ing the amount of bloat in windows</p>
tfinch
<p>Glad it can be hidden (and hopefully disabled) for the sake of the comments section, but this is something I'll probably use every day. Looking forward to trying it out.</p>
justme
Premium Member<p>This has to be about ads and gathering telemetry metrics – i.e. developing or enhancing profiles of users based on what "news and interests" they watch or have. If I had to guess, even when disabled, there will be a service running in the background collecting that data.</p><p><br></p><p>No, I'm not cynical at all.</p><p><br></p><p>Understand you can hide it. Hoping there will be a way via Group Policy to avoid it completely.</p><p><br></p><p>EDIT: Per Neowin, there will be Group Policy control available:</p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">"Microsoft will also</span><a href="https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/group-configuration-news-and-interests-on-the-windows-taskbar/ba-p/2281005" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(40, 120, 200); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> allow organizations to control the News and Interest feature</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">. Organization admins can open Group Policy and navigate to "Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > News and interests > Enable news and interests on the taskbar" in order to enable or disable the News and Interest widget."</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Original article: </span></p><p>https://www.neowin.net/news/how-to-turn-off-the-news-and-interest-widget-on-taskbar-in-windows-10/</p><p><br></p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/249401/microsoft-is-launching-news-and-interests-in-windows-10#624563" target="_blank"><em>In reply to JustMe:</em></a></p><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Organization admins can open Group Policy and . . .</span></blockquote><p><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">MSFT knows better than to annoy its most important customers with worthless new </span><em style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">features</em><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">.</span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">MSFT only inflicts this stuff on the hoi poloi who buy one Windows license at a time.</span></p>
SYNERDATA
<p>I use Newsflow to pin RSS feeds as live tiles to my start menu, making it incredibly useful. </p><p><br></p><p>If they enable that new Windows feature to present the RSS feeds from the news sites of my choice then it would be used and if they decide what is news and force media thereby then I would likely disable it and just stick with the Newsflow app from the app store.</p>
JimP
<p>Is there a way to turn this on manually?</p>