Turn Off News and Interests?

Hi all, Version 1803 here.

I have just started exploring use of Microsoft Edge. (Long time user of Edge Legacy.) I would like to get rid of the disgusting "News and Interests". Every search result tells about right clicking on task bar and selecting New an Interests from the popup menu. There id NO such item to select. And if I bring up the settings menu, there is one of those slide buttons that can be set to off. BUT, it always turns on the next time I start Edge.

Is there a way to get rid of this "feature"?

Regards, Jim

Hello Jim, have a look here

How to Enable or Disable News and Interests on Taskbar in Windows 10

As you may have seen, if News and Interests is present, you should see


If not, there's something amiss. What exactly do you see? Screenshot please.

I wonder if this might be because you are using an old build - 1803.

Is there a reason for that?


As for the tutorial Dude cites, you will see:

The policy used in this tutorial to enable or disable the News and Interests feature appears to no longer be available for some.
You can still add and remove News and Interests icon on taskbar.

Home users can try using the reg file, Option 2. But as stated, no guarantees.

The policy is available on mine:

And if I bring up the settings menu, there is one of those slide buttons that can be set to off.

- to whchc one are you referring? Screenshot please.

Do you mean the Bell notification icon in Edge's new tab page?

And, the method that Edits the Group Policy doesn't seem to be available In Windows Home.

Does the reg file not help?

And there's no correlation I see between launching Edge and N&I being re-enabled. That's odd.

Hi, your laptop seems to be about 5 years old - is that correct? If so, not particularly old, so in principle should reasonably expect it to be updatable.

There may be an MS 'compatibility hold'- you're not being offered a later build because of some potential incompatibility according to MS's internal rules.

The latest BIOS is from 2016 so not likely to be that.
Q324UA - Support

ASUS live update is the most recent item listed there.

Before attempting to upgrade, a wise user would ensure they had a current disk image- I hope you're using disk imaging routinely as is so often recommended here- as a minimum all O/S partitions. E.g. Macrium Reflect (free) + large enough external disk for image files.

Then you have a way back to 'as was' even if your system disk fails or your PC is unbootable.

Ensure you have at least 30Gb free on C: and avoid using security software that could interrupt the process (disabling certain such software is not enough- it has to be completely removed e.g. Comodo. Others such as AVAST seem to typically cause not problems).

You can try using the MS update assistant
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...a-fba2ac36fb3f

Or you could get the latest iso file using the MS media creation tool and use that.

I've never heard of that happening before.

For test purposes, please create a new user, log in as that user.

Do you then see the same thing?

With your existing user, try Inprivate mode with Edge- does that have the same effect?
E.g.


Your build 'suddenly' changing from 1803 to 20H2 is even stranger.

If you run winver (as the forum prompted you when you wrote your first post) what build number is reported?