26C Sunny on the toolbar

[mc2fool]

My Win 10 desktop PC just did the June 8 update* and after rebooting there was a fat item on the toolbar showing a yellow sun and "26C Sunny", and on clicking that a panel pops up showing "Top Stories", the weather, Traffic Updates and a bunch of other stuff.

Swear at Microsoft for inflicting stuff on me that I didn't ask for and start looking for how to kill it. Hmmm... no "X" at the top right of the popup, no menu including "Close window" on right clicking the toolbar item, indeed, no app menu at all, and nothing obvious in Task Manager that I can End task and/or disable from Start-up. So, nothing in any of the obvious places to get rid of the blasted thing ... cuss and spit ... the bar stewards!

Ok, after a little googling I found it in the end, so just to save any other Lemons the cussing and spitting , if you get it too then...

Right-click on the toolbar and select News and interests and then Turn off.



* 2021-06 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 2004 for x64-based Systems (KB5003637)

[Breelander]

My Win 10 desktop PC just did the June 8 update* and after rebooting there was a fat item on the toolbar showing a yellow sun and "26C Sunny", and on clicking that a panel pops up showing "Top Stories", the weather, Traffic Updates and a bunch of other stuff.....

It's called 'News and Interests'. It's actually been around for months, but MS have only been enabling it on a small number of machines - a sort of A-B testing. The KB5003637 cumulative update enables it for all machines. At least you found out how to turn it off

Opinions are mixed, some like it, other hate it. I got it a couple of months ago on one of my machines and left it on to see how I'd get on with it. Once you have trained it to your tastes I actually quite like it.

You can click on the X that appears when you hover the mouse at the top right of any story, then tell it 'Not interested in this story' or 'Don't like this source'. I'm really not in the right demographic for Hello! magazine, and I don't follow football, now those have gone from my feeds it's becoming quite useful. Your preferences are stored as *.bing.com cookies in Edge, so if you clear those you'd have to start training all over again.

The other thing I find annoying is that by default it opens whenever your mouse strays over that part of the taskbar. Right-click on the taskbar and in News and Interests you can un-tick 'Open on hover'. Mine now only opens when I tell it to by clicking on it.

[swill453]

If you click on an item, is there any way to get it to use your default browser, rather than Edge?

Scott.

[Arborbridge]

I've had an update recently, but don't seem to get this annoyance with Firefox or Chrome. It does appear with Edge, but I've no reason to use it.

Arb.

[mc2fool]

It's called 'News and Interests'. It's actually been around for months, but MS have only been enabling it on a small number of machines - a sort of A-B testing. The KB5003637 cumulative update enables it for all machines. At least you found out how to turn it off

Indeed, but only by poking around for a few minutes in vain and then googling for it.

If it initially had a This is the new News and Interests panel which shows you x, y & z, and you can turn it off and on by zzzzz explanation then I'd have had only a few seconds of cussing and spitting at it ....

[kiloran]

It's called 'News and Interests'. It's actually been around for months, but MS have only been enabling it on a small number of machines - a sort of A-B testing. The KB5003637 cumulative update enables it for all machines. At least you found out how to turn it off

Indeed, but only by poking around for a few minutes in vain and then googling for it.

If it initially had a This is the new News and Interests panel which shows you x, y & z, and you can turn it off and on by zzzzz explanation then I'd have had only a few seconds of cussing and spitting at it ....

Yes, it bugged the hell out of me too, until I found how to disable it yesterday, thanks to Google.

--kiloran

[Infrasonic]

* 2021-06 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 2004 for x64-based Systems (KB5003637)

Got that yesterday, not seeing this new thing anywhere, feeling left out...

I do have Calendar, Email, local weather and News app active tiles in the start menu though, just so I see them on boot and then they disappear - so I wonder if that has a bearing?

I've used Google News aggregator for years and found it really useful, especially as I can customise it so I never see Daily Mail/Express et al feeds, and avoid click bait rage...

[Lanark]

Every time you do a major update of Windows it will reset a lot of privacy preferences, it is well worth spending 1/2 hour digging through the settings to turn all the nonsense off, in particular background apps.
Individually each of these things doesn't make much difference, but when they are all turned on it will make your machine very slow.

[Infrasonic]

Every time you do a major update of Windows it will reset a lot of privacy preferences, it is well worth spending 1/2 hour digging through the settings to turn all the nonsense off, in particular background apps.
Individually each of these things doesn't make much difference, but when they are all turned on it will make your machine very slow.

In the bad old W10 days certainly true, I had to reset every time - but in recent memory I can't remember changing anything significant on review after each feature/major update - although it's quite possible I've missed some less significant stuff.

[Redmires]

it is well worth spending 1/2 hour digging through the settings to turn all the nonsense off, in particular background apps.
Individually each of these things doesn't make much difference, but when they are all turned on it will make your machine very slow.

Or use 'O&O Shutup 10' to apply the recommended settings. The new version released a few days ago will ....

Disable news and interests in the task bar on this device

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

[Arborbridge]

Well, I now have the update with a weather widget on the toolbar. It's annoying if you accidentally put the cursor over it, but I'll leave it there for a while and try to tame it. It doesn't do anything my phone won't do better, but I'll tolerate it and prune back the news sources - such a waste of time if you get dragged into all those!

Arb.

[Gerry557]

I didn't like the sunny symbol and temperature as my vpn is elsewhere.

So it's always wrong and will show me foreign news

Wish they would ask me first if I wanted that rather than forcing it on me and having to waste time getting rid.

[Urbandreamer]

This turned up recently on my machines.

Initially I thought that I would have to find out if I liked it or not. So I tried to use it.

Clicking on the weather brought up Microsoft Edge with a more detailed forcast.

WHY?
Why, why, why!

Microsoft Edge is NOT my default browser. If I wanted it to be my default browser I wouldn't have changed the default.
I checked and at least Microsoft hadn't changed my default. Opening htm files still uses Firefox.

So WHY does Microsoft see fit to ignore my choice for this "feature".

[swill453]

So WHY does Microsoft see fit to ignore my choice for this "feature".

Rhetorical question?

There's an app called EdgeDeflector which can get around this. Disclaimer: I haven't tried it.

Scitt.

[Breelander]

Clicking on the weather brought up Microsoft Edge with a more detailed forcast.

WHY?
Why, why, why!

'News and Interests' is effectively an extension of Edge, so much so that when you tell it not to show particular sources (I really don't need to see anything from Hello! magazine) or particular types of stories (I have no interest in football) then your preferences are stored as cookies for *.bing.com in Edge.

Each story is a link. If your favourite browser happens to be open at the time, then you can click and drag the link and drop it into your browser (works with my Firefox).

[Urbandreamer]

As said by Scitt, it was more of a Rhetorical question.

I have disabled the feature.
Microsoft clearly have returned to their old idea of making their browser part of their operating system, just as they did with Internet explorer.

To be clear I have no issue with the "News and Interestsr" idea, I simply do not wish to use Edge.
If you are happy you can inform the application of your real location to avoid it grabbing that from your IP (hence VPN confusion)

It would be nice if the OS allowed an alternative to bing, but that is obviously too much to ask of MS.

Apparently Linux offers at least 10, though I have not yet felt the desire to install one. Microsoft decided to give me one that I didn't want.

[bungeejumper]

Yes, it turned up on my machine yesterday. One more background process, helping itself to my bandwidth, and for all I knew it might be inviting all kinds of people into my computer. Took me two minutes to figure out how to turn it off. No harder than silencing the useless Cortana really. Or the X-Box apps, or the Microsoft Teams which I have no use for. Or any of the other bloatware that MS seems to insist on giving me. All of it gone, or at least in abeyance.

BJ

[tjh290633]

Right-click on the toolbar and select News and interests and then Turn off.

Many thanks for that. I was wondering how to get rid of the blasted thing. They couldn't even get my location correct. Having been away last week, I noticed it yesterday. It is bad enough getting notifications from various sources, which I don't recall asking for. A daily email update is all I need, and most of those go unread, except for the headlines.

TJH

[xeny]

Microsoft Teams which I have no use for. Or any of the other bloatware that MS seems to insist on giving me.

The others you get by default, yes, but Teams you have to actively download and install.

[jaizan]

Microsoft are getting worse, but they are still better than Android.

Google seem to randomly stop stuff working with updates.
For instance, I can no longer force a browser to show me the desktop version of google sheets and therefore edit my google script on Android devices. So I need a Windows or Linux device for that.
Then they decided the battery saving was so important they stop the GPS logging on any of my exercise apps when I am out cycling. That used to work. I have tried every single setting for battery saver and exclusions. So I get back from my cycle ride with over 70% of the battery charge and under 50% of my data logged.
Finally, if Microsoft slow my PC down, at least I can do a complete new install of the OS, with a reliable sourced from Microsoft original version of the OS.
If I needed to do that on Android, as far as I can tell, I have to trust all sorts of third party sources.

I have to say, one Microsoft irritation is all the advertising and other nonsense on the login screen, which if I click on it, opens in the Edge browser, despite me having set Firefox as the default. Seems like the anti-trust people need to have another go at Microsoft, since this is eroding my ability to choose a browser !