Since April, Microsoft has been rolling out a 'news and interests' feature to Windows 10, which some users will like and others will want to disable. News and interests is intended to provide a quick and easy way for Windows users to keep up to date with information that is relevant to them. It takes the form of a small button that displays the weather alongside the system tray in the taskbar.

The news and interests feature is being rolled out as part of Microsoft's KB5003214 update for Windows 10, which will be delivered directly to users — if it hasn't been already — assuming they have automatic updates turned on. Hovering over the button brings up the news and interests tray and moving the cursor away from the tray hides it. Clicking on the button will also open the try and will only allow it to be closed if it is clicked again.

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In the news and interests tray, users see top news stories and 'cards' showing information about the weather, finance, sport, and traffic. These cards can be toggled off by clicking the ellipsis menu button in their top-right corners and selecting the 'hide' option or toggled on by selecting the 'Manage interests' option at the top of the tray and navigating to the 'Experience Settings' tab when the personalization web page loads. As its name suggests, users can also select the news topics they want to follow within 'Manage interests,' as well as view new stories they've saved, stories they've read in the last 48 hours, and a list of publishers whose content they've opted to be hidden.

Using & Disabling Microsoft Windows News & Interests

Choosing Microsoft News topics of interest

Once a user has configured the news and interests feature with the topics they want to see and their preferred settings, they are able to pull up the news and interests tray to see up-to-date information personalized for them. They can continually refine what news they see by clicking the ellipsis menu button at the bottom right corner of each story tile and selecting to see 'More stories like this,' 'Fewer stories like this,' or to hide stories from the story's publisher. Users can also see a more comprehensive page of personalized content by selecting 'See more news' at the bottom of the news and interests tray, which will pull up the 'My Feed' page in Microsoft News.

Of course, if all of the news and interests functionality added as part of the ongoing evolution of Windows is not something a user wants, it can easily be disabled so that it doesn't appear in the taskbar. To do this, it's simply a case of right-clicking on a blank area of the taskbar bar, hovering the cursor over the 'News and interests' menu item, and selecting 'Turn off.' In this sub-menu, it's also possible to choose whether to see an icon with text or just an icon on the news and interests button, to reduce the number of updates, and whether or not the tray will open when hovered over.

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Sources: Microsoft 1, 2, 3