Windows 10: How to turn off the News and Interests feature of Windows 10

News and Interests is a new feature of Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system that is currently in testing. Introduced in Insider build 21286, News and Interests is available in certain geographical regions only currently. Microsoft has not yet revealed if the feature will land in the upcoming next feature update version of Windows 10.

News and Interests




News and interests displays weather information on the Windows 10 taskbar when it is enabled. The information is localized, and you get the current temperature and weather conditions displayed directly on the taskbar. When you hover over the icon, news and interests is displayed, hence the name of the feature.

A left-click on the icon opens a news widget with personal feed widgets.





It features headlines, sports, weather, finance and traffic information by default for the selected region and language. Ads are not shown and links open in Microsoft's Chromium-based Edge browser even if another web browser is set as the default browser on the system.

A click on the three dots icon and the selection of language and content opens a configuration page. Here you may change the region and language, and turn off or on certain cards based on interests.



One thing that you cannot change here currently is the location the weather information is displayed for; this can be edited in the News and interests widget directly by selecting the three-dots menu of the weather card and then "edit location" from the menu that opens. You may switch from auto-detect to a fixed location.

Turn off News and Interests




Some Windows 10 users may like that weather information is displayed on the taskbar, or that news are just a single-click away. Those who don't, may disable the News and interests widget to remove it from the taskbar.

Here is how that is done:

1. Right-click on the News and interests entry on the Windows 10 taskbar.
2. Select the News and interests entry on the menu that opens.
3. To disable the feature entirely, select "turn off".
   1. You may alternatively reduce it to an icon-only display.
   2. You may also select "reduce taskbar updates".

Changes take effect immediately. To restore the feature, right-click on a blank space on the taskbar, select "News and interests" and then either "show icon and text" or "show icon only".

Administrators may turn off the feature using the Windows Registry as well:

1. Open the Windows Registry editor
   1. Select Start
   2. Type regedit.
   3. Select the Registry Editor result.
   4. Confirm the UAC prompt.
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds.
3. Locate the Dword value ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode.
   1. If it does not exist, right-click on Feeds and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value.
   2. Name it ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode.
4. The following values are supported:
   1. Value 0: Both the weather icon and temperature is shown.
   2. Value 1: Only the weather icon is displayed.
   3. Value 2: The feature is turned off.
5. Restart the computer.

Now You: what is your take on the News and interests widget? Good feature?

Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post How to turn off the News and Interests feature of Windows 10 appeared first on gHacks Technology News.

read more...

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

Pressing “Windows+Pause Break” (it’s up there next to scroll lock) opens the “System” Window.

Windows 10: In the new version of Windows, Explorer has a section called Quick Access. This includes your frequent folders and recent files. Explorer defaults to opening this page when you open a new window. If you’d rather open the usual This PC, with links to your drives and library folders, follow these steps:

• Open a new Explorer window.
• Click View in the ribbon.
• Click Options.
• Under General, next to “Open File Explorer to:” choose “This PC.”
• Click OK

credit to Lifehacker.

 

Is it time for Windows 10 already?

Here's a good step by step guide on doing a fresh install.

How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive - Software - Feature - HEXUS.net

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

Privacy tweaks...

• Turn Cortana Off. Bring up the Start menu and start typing. Click on the notebook icon in the left sidebar and choose Settings. From there, you can turn off Cortana.
• Search online and include web results. When you turn off Cortana, you’ll see this option appear. You can turn it off if you’d rather not get web search suggestions from the Start menu, which log your typing and send it back to Microsoft so you can get live-updating predictions, just like you do on Google.com or in Chrome and Firefox.
• Getting to Know You. In Settings > Privacy > Speech, Inking, & Typing, you’ll find a feature called “Getting to Know You”. This is probably the most sweeping privacy setting on the system, and even after turning off Cortana, you’ll have to disable this setting. Just click the “Stop Getting to Know Me” button to turn it off.
• Cloud Info. Turning off Getting to Know You removes info from your device, but you’ll have to remove it from the cloud separately. In that same window, click “Go to Bing and manage personal info for all your devices” to clear the Getting to Know You Data from your Microsoft account.

• If you head to Settings > Privacy > Feedback & Diagnostics, you’ll see two settings:

• Feedback frequency: Windows will occasionally ask you for feedback so you can send Microsoft your thoughts on Windows 10. If you’d rather it not bug you with such things, you can change it to Never.
• Diagnostic and usage data: This feature can send a lot of data back to Microsoft, including how often you use certain apps, which apps you use most often, and memory snapshots (which can inadvertently include parts of a document you’re working on if something crashes). You can change this to Full, Enhanced, or Basic. You can read more about what each of these to here.

Microsoft doesn’t let you turn off diagnostics completely, except on Enterprise versions of Windows. The Basic setting, they say, is data that is “vital to the operation of Windows”, including Windows Update and malicious software protection.


some may be duplicated. I found this info on Lifehacker, if anyone wants the full article.