Many of you might have noticed the new ‘Live Weather’ updates being displayed on the right of the Taskbar on Windows 10. It’s the ‘News and Interests’ widget that Microsoft has been testing for a while with select users and is now available to all Windows 10 with recent Windows Update.

Why do I have Weather on Taskbar?

The ‘News and Interests’ widget on Windows 10 allows you to quickly access the news, sports, local weather, stocks amongst others right from the ‘Taskbar’ in a single click. And with the option to customize, you can set your interests to view only the content that’s relevant to you.

By default, the ‘News and Interests’ widget shows live weather on the taskbar. Unfortunately, Microsoft just chose to design it that way. Live weather updates could be helpful in some regions where you cannot tell when it’s going to rain, it keeps you in the know, but placing it on the Taskbar is a nightmare for many users.

The Taskbar handles all open apps, windows, and docked app icons. For the multi-tasker people among us, Taskbar is an extremely important space, and having weather updates taking up a small room in that limited space can affect productivity and annoy (a lot).

The ‘Top Stories’ section in the widget does a pretty good job of curating a news feed that’s personal to your interest. But it’s not so important to have it at the cost of Taskbar space. Thankfully, there are a few ways around it.

Disable ‘News and Interests’ Widget to Remove Weather from Taskbar

If you want to remove weather from Taskbar and disable the ‘News and Interests’ widget altogether, the process is fairly simple and wouldn’t take more than a minute.

To disable the ‘News and Interest’ widget, right-click on any empty portion of the ‘Taskbar’, hover the cursor over ‘News and interests’, and then select ‘Turn off’ from the menu that appears.

The ‘News and Interests’ widget will be disabled and wouldn’t show weather on the Taskbar anymore.

You can enable the widget at a later point through the same process. But selecting either the ‘Show icon and text’ or the ‘Show icon only’ option.

Hide Weather but Keep ‘News and Interests’ Widget

If you don’t want to disable the ‘News and Interests’ widget altogether but are annoyed with the room it’s consuming by showing weather on taskbar, there’s an option to disable weather updates while keeping the widget.

The space occupied by the widget can be reduced by changing the settings to ‘Show icon only’ instead of ‘Show icon and text’.

To switch to ‘Show icon only’ settings, right-click on the ‘Taskbar’, hover the cursor over ‘News and Interests’, and then select the ‘Show icon only’ option from the menu. We have also highlighted the current view of the ‘News and Interest’ widget to help you easily identify the change.

Compare the space the widget consumes now with what it was consuming earlier. If space is your concern, switching to ‘Show icon only’ settings would be the ideal approach since you can still access the widget with a single click.

Remove Weather Card in ‘News and Interests’ Panel but Keep it in Taskbar

If you have noticed, apart from the ‘Weather’ icon n the ‘Tasbkar’ itself, there is a separate ‘Weather Card’ in the ‘News and Interests’ widget. If you just want a basic update of the current temperature and the conditions, the widget icon is sufficient and you don’t need a separate tile for it. In this case, you can hide the ‘Weather Card’ from the widget screen.

To hide the ‘Weather Card’, click (or hover the cursor) on the ‘News and Interests’ icon on the ‘Taskbar’ to launch the widget.

You will now find the ‘Weather Card’ at the top-right. Next, click on the ellipsis at the top-right corner of the tile to launch the menu.

Now, select the ‘Hide weather card’ option from the menu.

The ‘Weather Card’ will not be visible anymore on the ‘News and Interests’ widget. You can similarly hide other tiles/cards as well. In case, you want to unhide the card, the process ain’t that straightforward.

To unhide the ‘Weather Card’ or another information card that you have hidden, right-click on the ellipsis for any other visible card and select the ‘More settings’ option.

The ‘Experience Settings’ tab of ‘Micosoft Edge’ browser will show. Locate the ‘Weather’ option under ‘Information cards’, and click on the toggle next to it to enable the card.

The ‘Weather Card’ will again be visible be on the ‘News and Interests’ widget.

Now that you are well versed with the concept of the ‘News and Interests’ widget and the various available customizations, set them accordingly and enjoy the desired Windows experience.