Does News and Interests widget require MS News and Weather apps?

I have a laptop that doesn't have the Microsoft News or Weather app preinstalled. After installing some Windows updates, I saw that I had the "News and interests" option in the task bar. I have it turned on but the widget hasn't shown up. Turning it off then on again didn't help. Does that widget require the MS News and Weather apps in order to function?

On another PC, I have no issues with that widget appearing but that one has had the News and Weather apps installed before the widget was released.

Berton said:

Your last statement does seem to indicate the answer to the question. I only have the Widgets on my Win11 Insider Preview Dev channel computer and have the News and Weather on all machines.

Perhaps, but I don't want to install other apps on the PC in question just to try it out, since it's a managed (i.e. work) PC. Was hoping someone knew for sure if there's a dependency between those standalone apps and the widget.

Well, I can confirm that installing the MSN Weather app had no effect on making the News and Interests widget show up. If anyone has any ideas on how to make it show up, that'd be great!

Hi Mugen, how did you install the weather app? I noticed that I this weather app has gone from my tiles as it is displaying the following:

“P~Microsoft.BingWeather_8weky…”

The widget still works despite this being weather app not being installed.

Dannywrg8 said:

Hi Mugen, how did you install the weather app? I noticed that I this weather app has gone from my tiles as it is displaying the following:

“P~Microsoft.BingWeather_8weky…”

The widget still works despite this being weather app not being installed.

Can't help you with that error message but I got the app from the Microsoft Store.