{"id":9973,"date":"2024-09-26T07:02:50","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T07:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/how-to-disable-and-completely-remove-widgets-from-the-windows-11-taskbar\/"},"modified":"2025-01-20T09:56:57","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T09:56:57","slug":"how-to-disable-and-completely-remove-widgets-from-the-windows-11-taskbar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/how-to-disable-and-completely-remove-widgets-from-the-windows-11-taskbar\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Disable and Completely Remove Widgets from the Windows 11 Taskbar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><p><strong>Widgets<\/strong> are a new feature in Windows 11, serving as interactive elements on the desktop to show dynamic content like weather updates, news alerts, and other data from various channels. Initially, a widget icon appears on the taskbar&#8217;s left side displaying the current weather. By clicking this icon or using the <code>WIN+W<\/code> shortcut, a <strong>widget board<\/strong> opens, housing mini-apps such as news feeds, stock quotes, weather forecasts, maps, traffic updates, sports scores, advertising suggestions, and more.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>However, many users find these widgets to be a disruptive aspect of the Windows 11 interface. Additionally, there are concerns about the <code>widgets.exe<\/code> process and its related ones like <code>msedgewebwebview2.exe<\/code> contributing to higher CPU usage and substantial RAM consumption even when idle.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Users looking to disable widgets in the Windows 11 taskbar can follow these steps:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Navigate to <strong>Settings<\/strong> -&gt; <strong>Personalization<\/strong> -&gt; <strong>Taskbar<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Turn off the <strong>Widgets toggle<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><p>There are also other ways to hide widgets from the Windows 11 taskbar:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>via registry:<\/p>\n<p><code>reg add \"HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced\" \/v \"TaskbarDa\" \/t REG_DWORD \/d \"0\" \/f<\/code><\/li>\n<\/p>\n<li>via Group Policy. Open the local GPO management console (<code>gpedit.msc<\/code>), and navigate to Computer Configuration -&gt; Administrative Templates -&gt; Windows Components -&gt; Widgets. Disable the <strong>Allow Widgets<\/strong> policy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><p>However, the widgets will continue to run in the background and you can still open the widgets board by pressing <code>Win+W<\/code>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>In Windows 11, it is possible to remove the widgets app completely using the <a href=\"https:\/\/woshub.com\/using-winget-package-manager-windows\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>WinGet<\/strong> package manager<\/a> (requires an Internet connection). Run the following command in a command prompt:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p><code>winget uninstall \"windows web experience pack\"<\/code><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Even after uninstallation, the widget APPX package named <code>MicrosoftWindows.Client.WebExperience_cw5n1h2txyewy<\/code> might still exist under other user profiles.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>To <a href=\"https:\/\/woshub.com\/how-to-uninstall-modern-apps-in-windows-10\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">eliminate a preinstalled Microsoft Store app<\/a> from all user profiles and <a href=\"https:\/\/woshub.com\/remove-built-apps-features-editions-install-wim-image\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">expunge a provisioned package from the Windows image<\/a>, utilize the subsequent PowerShell commands:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p><code>Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Where-Object {$_.Name -like \"*WebExperience*\"} | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue<br \/>Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -online | Where-Object {$_.Name -like \"*WebExperience*\"}| Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -online \u2013Verbose<\/code><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><div>To get the Windows 11 widgets back, you can reinstall the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/p\/windows-web-experience-pack\/9mssgkg348sp\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Windows Web Experience Pack<\/a> from the Microsoft Store, or <a href=\"https:\/\/woshub.com\/how-to-download-appx-installation-file-for-any-windows-store-app\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">download and install the APPX file manually<\/a>.<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Widgets are a new feature in Windows 11, serving as interactive elements on the desktop to show dynamic content like weather updates, news alerts, and other data from various channels. Initially, a widget icon appears on the taskbar&#8217;s left side displaying the current weather. By clicking this icon or using the WIN+W shortcut, a widget [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9974,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-windows-11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9973"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10318,"href":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9973\/revisions\/10318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheapwindowsvps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}