How to Disable News and Interests using Group Policy (GPO)
In this post, you’ll learn how to disable news and interests using group policy. Using a GPO, you can permanently turn off the news and interests from the Windows taskbar.
There are different methods that one can use to disable the news and interests in Windows 10. The News and Interests features can be turned off using the Taskbar options, Group Policy, and the Registry. You can also disable news and interests using Intune.
“News and Interests,” a new feature in Windows 10 version 21H1, provides a brief summary of the most important news and local weather information. Microsoft added a weather widget icon to the taskbar in Windows 11 to serve as an entry point for widgets.
The task bar also shows News and Interests as well as a day’s worth of local weather predictions. When the News and Interests icon is hovered over, a window containing easy access to tonnes of information is opened.
Microsoft claims that with news and interests, users may gain instant access to an integrated feed of dynamic content that updates throughout the day, such as news and weather. Thankfully, Microsoft offers a mechanism to remove the News and Interests from the Taskbar if you don’t like this new feature and wish to disable it.
Disable News and Interests using Group Policy
You can use Group Policy to disable News and Interest in Windows 10 taskbar. Launch the Local Group Policy Editor by running the gpedit.msc command.
Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > News and interests.
On the right pane, double-click on the Enable news and interests on the taskbar policy. This policy setting specifies whether news and interests is allowed on the device. Select Disabled to turn off News and Interests feature. Click Apply and OK.
You must restart your computer for the changes to take effect. Log in back, and you should find the news and interests is now disabled and not visible on your taskbar. Using the group policy, you’ve permanently turned off News and Interests in Windows 10.
