How to Remove the Widgets Panel From the Windows 11 Taskbar

What the Widgets button actually is

Widgets arrived with Windows 11: a button on the taskbar's left edge showing weather and opening a board of news, stocks, sports and web gadgets fed by MSN. It renders in a hidden Edge WebView2 window, so a click can spin up browser processes even if you never open Edge. Windows 10's counterpart, News and Interests, lives in the same family and turns off with its own taskbar menu.

Three things make people remove it: the taskbar gets a permanent weather readout you may not want, the board is essentially an MSN advertising surface, and content personalization rides on your Microsoft account and advertising ID. None of this is dangerous — it is a preference call. The important part is picking the removal depth you actually want, because Windows offers three.

Three depths of removal

The settings toggle hides the button in thirty seconds; the app uninstall removes the feature outright; the registry policy enforces the off state for everyone and survives most resets. Each step up is stronger and takes a minute longer. All three routes are official — no third-party tools involved.

• Settings → Personalization → Taskbar → Taskbar items → Widgets off — hides the button, board remains installed
• Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Windows Web Experience Pack → Uninstall — removes Widgets entirely
• winget uninstall --id 9MSSGKG348SP — the same removal from any terminal
• reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Dsh /v AllowNewsAndInterests /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f — policy for all users, then reboot
• Windows 10: right-click the taskbar → News and interests → Turn off

What each method leaves behind

The toggle is the mildest: the button disappears, but the Web Experience Pack stays, and on some builds the Win+W shortcut still opens the board. Uninstalling the pack removes the entry from taskbar settings too — there is simply no Widgets left to toggle — and takes the MSN board with it. The Dsh policy is the most durable: it enforces the off state through feature updates, where the plain toggle occasionally gets re-enabled.

One neighbor you should leave alone is the Edge WebView2 Runtime, listed separately in Installed apps: other applications embed it for their interfaces, and removing it breaks them without touching Widgets. If Widgets returns after a feature update, re-check the toggle or re-apply the policy — updates occasionally restore removed components. Kleaner PRO applies this among its Windows 11 tweaks, one click with a preview and an undo, alongside the rest of its cleanup pass.

Questions and Answers

Read next

All articles · FAQ