If you are running Windows 10 version 1909 or above with the May 2021 cumulative update (or later) installed, there’s a good chance that the shiny new “News and Interests” taskbar widget has appeared on your Windows 10 device.
Do not want this news feed widget to appear on your modern managed Windows 10 fleet? This blog post can help you with the requirement.
Table of Contents
Understanding the “News and Interests” taskbar widget rollout development
Microsoft has been testing the “News and Interests” taskbar widget with the Windows 10 preview builds in the Dev channel since December 2020.
However, in April 2021, Microsoft brought this feature to the Semi-Annual channel for Windows 10 version 1909 and above, by including it as part of the optional cumulative update preview.
Users performing a manual Check for updates in Windows Update and then selecting to install the optional preview of the May 2021 cumulative update preview got access to the new feature.
But as in the case of most enterprise-managed Windows 10 devices, users rarely install the optional preview updates, which resulted in many Windows 10 devices not receiving the new feature.
But this was until Microsoft released the June 2021 Patch Tuesday mandatory cumulative update.
The June 2021 cumulative update for Windows 10 enabled the taskbar news feed feature for all the devices running Windows 10 version 1909 or later, resulting in mass enablement.
This is turn has caused many to seek information on how to disable the new feature.
How to disable the taskbar “News and Interests” widget
As a user, you can easily disable the new Windows 10 “News and Interests” widget on the endpoint by
- right-clicking on any blank space on the taskbar
- select News and interests
- select Turn off.
However, as an Intune admin, you would want to do this remotely on the managed endpoints.
Thinking about how to disable the new Windows 10 taskbar widget “News and Interest” from Intune?
Disable Windows 10 taskbar “News and Interests” widget from Intune with a Settings Catalog profile
- Login to the MEM Admin Center portal
- Navigate to Devices > Windows (by Platform) > Configuration profiles
- Click on Create Profile
- Select platform as Windows 10 and later
- Set profile type as Settings catalog (preview)
- Click on Create
- Give a Name and Description for the profile as required
- Click on Next
- On the Configurations settings screen, click on Add settings
In the Settings picker, search for “News and interests” and select the setting- In the Settings picker, search for “News and interests“, select Feeds from the Browse by category section.
- Check Enable News and interest and click on Select all these settings.
Post Update: Microsoft has changed the
- Set the feature Enable News and interests to Not allowed
- Click on Next
- Make the necessary assignments, add scope tags (if required) and once done, click on Create
As the profile gets created, all you need to do now is monitor the deployment status.
On the endpoint, you can check if the device has received the proper settings from Intune by generating an MDM Diagnostic report and then checking the policies listed under the Managed policies section of the report.
Since my deployment is on the device level and not the user level as can be seen from the above snapshot, hence the policy will apply to any user signing into the device, and not just the current user.
End-user Experience
When you set the new taskbar widget “News and Interests” to Not allowed using policy, the feature gets turned off completely. Also, the settings UI for the feature gets removed from the Taskbar context menu..
As such, the end-users won’t get the option to enable the widget on the managed endpoints from the Taskbar context menu.
Wrap Up
Well, that was all for today. Thanks for reading.
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Joymalya Basu Roy is an Indian IT professional with around 6.5 years of work experience in IT Software Support and Services. Having completed his B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering back in 2015, he is 30 years old as of 2022, ethnolinguistically a Bengali, and hails from the Indian city of Kolkata, West Bengal. Presently associated with Atos as a Senior Consultant – Architect, he works in Digital Workplace T&T projects leading the build & deployment, adoption, and support of Microsoft Intune across greenfield/brownfield environments for Android/iOS/Windows. He is also honored to be recognized as a Microsoft MVP for Enterprise Mobility – 2021 and 2022-23.
Thanks for posting and fun meme at the end :).
Does not work for me, tried on two tenants and get Error type 2, error 6500.
I couldn’t find News and Interests in search, it found feeds, which in turn has News and Interests, with the allow/Not allowed.
Hi Kieran,
I agree that MS has changed the names a bit. At the time of writing, it was as is shown in my screenshots.
I still do have the same config applied. However, seeing your comment, when I went to create a new profile, I could see what you are referring to.
Will update the post. But still with the new profile also, the deployment state is successful.