How to Turn Off News and Interests with Group Policy

News and Interests on the Windows 10 taskbar is a new feature that is turned on automatically for all users of Windows 10, version 1909 and later. News and Interests is a little controversial because some people see it as more of a distraction than a useful tool. It shows the current weather next to the system tray in the taskbar. When you click on it, a panel opens displaying cards with news stories, stock, travel, and sports information.

Users can customize the experience to a certain extent, choosing which cards are displayed and selecting interests to tailor the news stories. News and Interests might be useful for employees who rely on the latest information for their work. For others, it could be seen as an unnecessary toy that is better disabled. Whatever you decide for your organization, News and Interests can be turned off using GPO disable news and interests or using Mobile Device Management (MDM).

Steps to Disable News and Interests using Group Policy

• Add feeds.admx file added to your local device or central store
• Set ‘Enable news and interests on the taskbar’ to Disabled
• Sign out and sign back in for it to take effect

If you are not familiar with Group Policy, you should make sure you look at the following two articles on Petri first:

How to Create and Link a Group Policy Object in Active Directory
How to Create a Group Policy Central Store

Before you can configure News and Interests using Group Policy, you will need to make sure you have the feeds.admx file added to your local device or central store if you are using one. You can find feeds.admx, on any Windows 10 device that has the May 2021 cumulative update applied, in the C:WindowsPolicyDefinitions folder. Alternatively, you can download feeds.admx from the Microsoft Download Center here as part of the updated Group Policy administrative templates for Windows 10 20H2.

To turn off News and Interests, you need to set ‘Enable news and interests on the taskbar’ to Disabled. You can find the setting in Group Policy under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > News and interests.

Once the new Group Policy setting has applied to a device, the user will need to either sign out and sign back in for it to take effect. Or News and Interests will be disabled the next time the device is restarted.

Turn off News and Interests using Mobile Device Management

For organizations using Mobile Device Management (MDM) to configure Windows 10 devices, there’s also the option to disable News and Interests using policy. The ‘Experience’ Configuration Service Provider (Policy CSP – Experience), includes a setting called ‘Experience/AllowNewsAndInterestsOnTheTaskbar’ that you can disable to turn off News and Interests. For more information on the Experience CSP, check out the documentation here.

News and Interests is implemented in Windows 11 as a new feature called Widgets. Or an old feature resurrected, depending on how you look at it. Once Windows 11 is officially announced and gets nearer to general availability, we’ll have more information on how organizations can manage Widgets in Windows 11. But for the time being, the current Group Policy and MDM controls in Windows 10 for News and Interests let organizations turn the feature off.

FAQs

How does disabling news and interests via GPO affect system performance?Disabling News and Interests through Group Policy typically improves system performance by reducing background activity and memory usage. The feature no longer needs to fetch and display real-time information continuously, which lowers CPU and network overhead.

Can I use the GPO setting to disable news and interests settings across multiple Windows versions?

Yes, but compatibility varies. While you can GPO disable news and interests on Windows 10 version 1909 and later, the implementation may vary for different Windows versions, especially for Windows 11 where the feature is integrated into Widgets.

What happens to existing data when news and interests is disabled via GPO?

 news data, weather information, and personalized settings are removed from the system. This frees up storage space and ensures that the component is fully deactivated.

Are there any network implications when implementing GPO disable news and interests?

Yes. Using GPO disable news and interests can reduce network bandwidth usage as it prevents the automatic downloading of news content and weather updates, potentially improving overall network performance in corporate environments.

Can the ‘GPO disable news and interests’ settings be safely reversed later?

Yes, administrators can easily reverse GPO disable news and interests settings by changing the policy back to “Not Configured” or “Enabled,” which will restore the feature without causing any system complications or requiring additional configuration.