I was using my Windows PC as usual and suddenly there was a “Breaking News” alert on the lower right side of my Taskbar. What the heck? How can I turn that feature off as I don’t want to see news alerts on my computer?
The original idea was simple, a bar along the bottom of the computer screen that would have a button to launch a system menu along with tabs in the form of app icons to make it easy to switch from one program to another. Then people wanted to add the date and time, shortcuts to system utilities, even a pop-up calendar. Next thing we knew, the Taskbar had taken over Windows!
Okay, maybe it isn’t quite that dramatic, but did you know you can configure your Taskbar to be double high so you can have app buttons stacked up too? On a big enough screen, that can actually be useful, but for those of us with smaller displays, that auto-hide Taskbar along the bottom works just fine. Except every so often Microsoft gives us an update that changes the Taskbar. A while back it was widgets and most recently it was the Windows Copilot button that showed up. It’s the Widgets feature that’s popped that Breaking News alert onto your Taskbar, so let’s have a look and figure out how to remove it.
TASKBAR WITH WIDGET WINDOW ENABLED
You may think of widgets as standalone apps, but in Windows parlance, Widgets refers to an entire window that pops up on the left side, comprised of news and specific apps and utilities you’ve enabled. Your Taskbar usually just shows the weather but if there’s breaking news from MSN.com, it ends up looking like this:
I’m showing the entire Taskbar from my Windows computer and you can see, it gets a bit busy with everything going on. More importantly, I want to see the weather but am instead getting “Breaking news: Get caught up” on the Taskbar. ¡No bueno!
Move your cursor over the left edge and the widget window will appear. It’s big, taking up maybe 30% of the screen itself:
Sure enough along the top is that breaking news alert about Congressman Kevin McCarthy resigning from his position in Congress in just a few weeks. Did I need my workflow and thought process interrupted for that news? Nope, it could have easily waited until I checked news later in the day.
Peek at the very top of this window and you can see a circular arrow (“refresh”), a two-headed arrow (“maximize”) and my account profile picture. But where’s the gear icon to get to Settings?
UPDATE YOUR WIN11 WIDGET SCREEN SETTINGS
Turns out that it’s hidden under the profile picture. Just like social media channels, clicking on your own profile pic produces an important result:
There aren’t a lot of settings to tweak but I do recommend that you disable all three of those shown. The first might be the most useful, changing things so you have to click on the weather icon to get to the widget window, but the other two help it stay quiet and unobtrusive.
None of the changes remove the Breaking News from the Taskbar, however. To do that you need to click on the “x” to close the notification window, then reload the widgets window by clicking on the round refresh icon.
With that done, your taskbar should now show the weather:
56ºF and sunny. Not too bad for early December in Colorado, actually!
MORE TWEAKS TO THE TASKBAR
While we’re talking about the Taskbar, be aware that there are still more things you can do to change it up. Want to get rid of the weather widget entirely, leaving that left side blank? Right-click on the Taskbar and choose “Taskbar Settings” from the resultant menu. Then…
Right at the top you can see “Widgets” and how mine is “ON”. Change it to OFF and it’ll instantly vanish. Scroll down the list and you’ll see that there are a ton of things you can hide from your Taskbar (or, if you prefer, add to your Taskbar to achieve maximum button nirvana).
Scroll down further and you can even change what’s shown where on the Taskbar, making it a bit more like Windows 95 and all those earlier Windows layouts:
Switch the Taskbar alignment from “Center” to “Left” and it might just make you grin with nostalgic joy. Look closely at the Taskbar below the Settings window (above) and you’ll see what it does: The Windows button now moves left, where it always lived, followed by the search box and the weather widget (since I didn’t disable it). This is a fun change and one worth trying to see how it changes your user experience. I bet a lot of long-time Windows readers will love it, actually!
Pro tip: I’ve been writing about Windows for many years. Please check out my Windows help area for lots more useful tutorials while you’re visiting the site!