After the latest update to 21H1 a 'feature' called 'News and interests' is present on the Taskbar next to the Notification Area. Does anyone else have the problem that if you turn it off the Notification Area disappears until it's re-enabled?
Not 100% sure yet but this Registry edit might have fixed it. HKLM>Software>Policies>Microsoft>Windows then create a new key named Windows Feeds and add a new Dword(32 bit value) named EnableFeeds with a value of 0 followed by a reboot. EDIT: Sadly the Registry tweak didn't work either although it took a lot longer for the Notification Area to disappear. Looks like I'm stuck with the annoying icon until MS decided whether to bother fixing it.
Not had that but my toolbars have moved to a fixed location which I don't like and can't change, which is odd.
I wonder if it's related. The default setting of News and interests takes up a lot of taskbar space so it might be 'crowding out' other items. I still use Quick Launch and that wasn't affected even though it takes up a lot of space on my double height taskbar.
Just had the update on one of my other machines and now have a fixed weather widget in that area that I can't disable....
I've done a couple of things that help although there's still wasted space on the Taskbar. Firstly I disabled all the options apart from News as you can't disable that and selected 'Show icon only' and 'Reduce taskbar updates'. Secondly I gave feedback to Microsoft and told them it's sh**.
If you right click on it one of the options is news or something and you can hide it. It wasn't immediately obvious to me either.
In 3 of my systems if you turn it off the Notification area disappears until you re-enable it (see first post). It doesn't disappear immediately though, it takes a few minutes/hours.
It did on the new system but the menu wasn't on my main system, so thinking about what is different I discovered what the issue was. My taskbar is set to top of the screen and in that location the news and weather doesn't show but it does leave space for it on the taskbar which is what pushed my toolbars along, there is no menu Item for news and weather etc so I can't do anything about it. Once I moved my taskbar to the Original location the news and weather bit now pops up at which point I could disable it then I could put the taskbar back on top autohiding and looking as it always had done. So all is right with the world again so if you taskbar is elswhere this could be why you are having issues.
This might help. Apparently it's a known bug that Microsoft are aware of. Not sure I buy this as I still have the issue on my laptop despite uninstalling the update. Also, my gaming rig and stick PC don't have this problem regardless of whether the weather icon is visible or not.
I have the exact same problem, the weather widget appeared on my taskbar (next to the notification area) and now i can't shift the little bu**er, no matter what i try to do in the settings it just won't go ?! Has anyone managed to solve this problem ? Well i found out how to access those settings and have managed to get rid of the weather widget for now, i'll have to do a reboot and see if its gone for good....and IT's GONE !!
May be unrelated, but I found that on my home PCs which I have admin rights on I've disabled it permanently (that's a bold statement) through just right-clicking the taskbar and turning it off. On my work laptop, which I don't have admin rights on, the same actions just have it re-appear a few minutes later.
Mine has the weather stuck on Essex and I'm much nearer to Birmingham, clicking the weather just brings up what ever site it is but I can't see a way to get local weather.
Hover your mouse over the weather widget, at your location at the top-right, click on the three-small-dots for other options and edit the location....
Thanks but as it my work laptop I'm not overly bothered and it's now right. Also I turned to option off as it was only gettingin the way
21H2 didn’t take long too install, 5 minutes if that. Laptop restarted and I just checked by typing winver. I was doing normal updates earlier for Win 10 20H2 and my optional update about hour ago was for 21H1 Something not quite right
Mine installed in seconds, puzzling. Update: I just updated the sole PC I have that asks before downloading and it took a long while to update to 21H2. My guess is that normally it downloads in the background and possibly installs no matter what permissions have been given on updates.
