The widgets board in Windows 11 splits people into two camps: those who glance at it for weather and calendar every morning, and those who opened it once by accident and wanted it gone. I’ve been in both camps depending on the machine, so I understand each side.
This guide covers Windows 11 widgets from both angles — how to customize the board so it’s actually useful, and how to disable it partly or completely. The crux: the widgets board is only worth keeping if you strip out the news feed; otherwise, turn it off and reclaim both taskbar space and background memory.
Quick Answer
To customize Windows 11 widgets, press Win+W, click the + button, and pin or unpin cards. To disable them, open Settings, go to Personalization, then Taskbar, and switch Widgets off. For a complete removal on Windows 11 Pro, set the Allow widgets policy to Disabled in Group Policy.
In short: Win+W customizes the board, the Taskbar settings toggle hides the button, and Group Policy or the registry removes widgets entirely.
What Are Windows 11 Widgets, Exactly?
Widgets are small live cards — weather, calendar, to-do lists, sports scores — collected on a board that slides out from the left edge of the screen. You open it by clicking the weather icon on the taskbar or pressing Win+W, one of the Windows 11 keyboard shortcuts I use daily.
The board runs as its own background process (it shows up in Task Manager as Windows Widgets), which is why disabling it fully takes more than hiding the taskbar button.
Widgets are live info cards on a slide-out board, powered by a background process that keeps running even when the board is closed.
How Do I Customize the Widgets Board?
Ten minutes of pruning turns the default board from a news dump into a clean dashboard.
Step-by-Step: Build a Board You’ll Actually Use
- Press Win+W (or hover over the taskbar weather icon) to open the board.
- Click the + button in the top-right corner to open the widget picker.
- Pin the widgets you want — I keep Weather, Calendar, and To Do.
- Click the three-dot menu on any widget to switch between Small, Medium, and Large sizes.
- Drag widgets by their title bars to rearrange them; the most-checked ones belong at the top.
- Unpin anything you never open through the same three-dot menu.
Pro tip: pin the Small size for anything you only glance at, like weather. Large cards push everything else below the fold, and a board you have to scroll defeats the purpose of glanceable information.
Customizing means opening the board with Win+W, pinning what you need through the + picker, resizing with the three-dot menu, and dragging cards into priority order.
How Do I Hide the News Feed but Keep My Widgets?
The feed of MSN news stories under your pinned widgets is the part most people hate. You can remove it without losing the useful cards.
Open the widgets board, click the gear icon in the top-right, and choose Show or hide feeds. Turn the feed off, and the board reloads showing only your pinned widgets. Microsoft documents the board’s options on its official Windows support site if your build labels the setting slightly differently.
The gear icon inside the widgets board has a Show or hide feeds option that removes the news stories while keeping your pinned widgets.
How Do I Remove the Widgets Button from the Taskbar?
If you never open the board, hide its button. Right-click an empty spot on the taskbar, choose Taskbar settings, and switch the Widgets toggle off. The weather icon disappears immediately — no restart needed.
Know the limit of this method: Win+W still opens the board, and the background process keeps running. You’ve hidden the door, not emptied the room.
The Taskbar settings toggle removes the widgets button instantly but leaves the board and its background process in place.
How Do I Disable Widgets Completely?
To kill the feature — button, board, and background process — you need a policy.
On Windows 11 Pro: Group Policy
- Press Win+R, type gpedit.msc, and press Enter.
- Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Widgets.
- Double-click Allow widgets, select Disabled, and click OK.
- Restart the PC.
On Windows 11 Home: Registry Edit
Home lacks the Group Policy editor, so set the same policy in the registry. Open Registry Editor as administrator, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Dsh (create the Dsh key if it’s missing), add a DWORD (32-bit) value named AllowNewsAndInterests, leave it at 0, and restart.
On my desktop, Task Manager showed the Windows Widgets process idling at roughly 150 MB of RAM before I applied the policy; after the restart, the process was gone and Win+W did nothing. On a laptop, that’s one less background process of the kind I cover in my guide to fixing fast battery drain on Windows 11.
Troubleshooting tip: if the board still opens after a policy change, the policy hasn’t applied yet. Run gpupdate /force from a terminal or simply reboot — I’ve seen sign-out alone fail to apply it.
Disabling widgets completely requires the Allow widgets Group Policy on Pro or the AllowNewsAndInterests registry value on Home, followed by a restart.
Which Method Should You Use?
| Method | Removes taskbar button | Stops background process | Works on Home edition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hide news feed (gear icon) | No | No | Yes |
| Taskbar settings toggle | Yes | No | Yes |
| Group Policy | Yes | Yes | No (Pro only) |
| Registry edit | Yes | Yes | Yes |
My rule: keep widgets with the feed hidden if you use even one card daily. If you haven’t opened the board in a month, apply the policy and forget it exists.
Feed-hiding suits widget users, the taskbar toggle suits minimalists, and Group Policy or the registry suits anyone who wants widgets fully gone.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Assuming the taskbar toggle disables widgets. It only hides the button; the process keeps running. Fix: use the Group Policy or registry method for full removal.
- Creating the registry value in the wrong hive. Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER it does nothing. Fix: the Dsh key belongs under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft.
- Uninstalling the Windows Web Experience Pack to remove widgets. It works until a Store update quietly reinstalls it. Fix: the policy survives updates; use it instead.
- Skipping the restart after a policy change. The old state lingers and you conclude the fix failed. Fix: reboot or run gpupdate /force before judging.
- Letting Large widgets crowd the board. One oversized card buries the rest. Fix: default to Small or Medium and promote only your most-checked widget.
Most widget frustration comes from half-disabling the feature, editing the wrong registry hive, or skipping the restart that makes the policy stick.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I disable Windows 11 widgets on the Home edition?
Yes — Home just lacks the Group Policy editor, so you set the same policy through the registry. I’ve used the AllowNewsAndInterests value on a family member’s Home laptop and it behaved identically to Group Policy on my Pro desktop.
Does disabling widgets make Windows faster?
Modestly — you free the memory the widgets process was holding, which matters most on 8 GB machines. On my 32 GB desktop I disabled them for tidiness, not speed; on an older 8 GB laptop the reclaimed RAM was genuinely noticeable under load.
Can I keep the weather widget but get rid of the news?
Yes — the gear icon inside the board has a Show or hide feeds toggle that removes stories while keeping pinned widgets. That’s exactly my setup on the one PC where I still use the board: weather and calendar, zero headlines.
How do I get widgets back after disabling them?
Reverse whatever you did: set Allow widgets back to Not Configured, or delete the AllowNewsAndInterests value, then restart. When I re-enabled them to write this guide, my previously pinned widgets came back exactly as I’d left them.
Do widgets need a Microsoft account?
Mostly yes — personalized cards like Calendar and To Do pull from your signed-in account. On a local-account test machine, the board offered me generic content and kept prompting to sign in, which made it far less useful.
The short version: Home users disable widgets via the registry, the feed can be hidden separately, and everything is reversible after a restart.
Conclusion
Windows 11 widgets are worth keeping only after you’ve pruned the board and hidden the feed — and worth removing entirely if you never open them. Either way, ten minutes today settles it for good.
Pick your row in the table above and apply it now — then, if you like glanceable info done right, set up Phone Link to put your phone’s texts and photos on your PC next.