Windows 10: Microsoft's Weather app now displays more ads

It's raining ads in Windows 11. The Microsoft Weather app in the operating system now displays more ads.

You may recall that a year ago, Microsoft had actually removed the ads from the app, and it appeared that the company had finally listened to feedback from users. But the annoying banners are back, and there's two of them now on the Forecast page. For those unaware, the old version of Microsoft Weather was a UWP app, but the company replaced it with an Edge WebView, which is a container that uses the Edge Engine. In other words, the Weather app is technically just a web wrapper for MSN.com/weather. You can test this yourself, just open the website in your browser and temporarily disable your ad blocker to take a look at the ads, now open the desktop app, and you can see that the same ads appear in the Weather app.



Microsoft Weather app displays ads on every page


Windows Latest spotted the addition of more ads in the Weather app, and it gets worse. The advertisements are persistent, i.e. they are pinned, so they are always displayed even when you scroll down the screen.



Ghacks can confirm that the ads appear in the app, the main page displays the banners on the right side of the screen. But that is not the only place where you will encounter the ads, they actually appear in every page in the Weather app. Switch to another tab in the sidebar, and you will notice that the ads appear there too. The ads are shown on the left side of the screen in the Map pages. There are no options to hide or close the ads, unless you block some servers via the hosts file, but it may take some effort to dig in to find the information.



That's a shame, because the weather info is actually pretty good. But here is the good news, the advertisements only appear in maximized mode, so all you need to do is use the app in the smaller window. The bad news is that this trick only works with the main page, i.e. the Forecast tab in the Weather app, so the ads still appear on all the other pages.



The ads are not the only annoyances in the Weather app, you will also see news articles from various outlets, and most of these maybe irrelevant to the location, unless you change the Edition (region) in the App's Settings. You may want to consider using Safing's Portmaster app, or AdGuard, or set up Pi-hole via Docker, to block ads system-wide in Windows 11.

On a side note, the Weather app now has a fluent design with blur and transparency effects that can be seen in the menu, main page, and the tiles. The sidebar has some new options, you can now switch between the daily, weekly, monthly, forecasts, maps and other data.

Microsoft's ad strategies have been rather pushy, and anti-consumer. The Redmond company has been pushing ads aggressively in various apps, including Game Pass ads in the Settings app in Windows 11. We have also seen promotions for Microsoft 365 in the Start Menu, the Settings, and the new Outlook app. Even Windows Defender displays a warning to set up OneDrive to protect yourself from ransomware attacks.

Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post Microsoft's Weather app now displays more ads appeared first on gHacks Technology News.

read more...

 

Favorites option issue in Microsoft Weather app.

Hi,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.



We understand your concern as you are unable to add
Orlando Florida as favorites in Microsoft Weather app. In order to get clarity and to assist you accordingly, please reply with the answers to the questions below.

• What is the Windows 10 version and Build installed? (Type
  winver in Windows search/Run command)
  
• Are you aware of any recent changes to the PC, prior to this issue?
  
• What is the Microsoft Weather app version installed on the PC?

Meanwhile we would suggest you to reset the app and then try adding Orlando Florida as favorites in Microsoft Weather app.

1. Press Windows + I key to open Windows Settings.
   
2. Click on Apps and select Apps & feature from the left pane.
   
3. Scroll and look for Weather app.
   
4. Select the app and click on Advanced option.
   
5. Click on Reset and once you see a tick mark, then relaunch the app and check.

If the issue still persists, then refer the steps as suggested in this article:
Fix problems with apps from Microsoft Store



Hope it helps.



Aditya Roy

Microsoft Community – Moderator

 

Microsoft Weather App Forecast

Hi Holly,

To address this concern, we suggest that you try to uninstall and reinstall the Microsoft Weather on your computer to refresh the app and to get the latest update. You may follow these steps:

• Go to Search, type powershell, and open
  PowerShell as Administrator.
• Enter the following command and press Enter:
  
  Get-AppxPackage *bingweather* | Remove-AppxPackage

To reinstall it, just go to Store and search for Microsoft Weather.

Let us know how it goes.

Thank you.

 

Weather app not working

Since you've already tried to run the app troubleshooter but the issue still persists, we suggest that you uninstall the
Weather app using a PowerShell command and reinstall it. To do this, please follow the steps listed below:

• Type PowerShell in the Search bar.
  
• Right-click on Windows PowerShell then select Run as administrator.
  
• Copy and paste the command below into the PowerShell window then press Enter:
  
  Get-AppxPackage *bingweather* | Remove-AppxPackage
  
• Restart your PC after uninstalling the app.
• To reinstall the app, type Store in the Search bar and press
  Enter.
  
• Search for the Weather app, then click Get or Download.
  

Kindly update us with the result after performing the suggested steps and let us know if you need further assistance.