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

Thanks, Brink, for the Group Policy instructions. That worked fine to disable it. However now that it is gone the taskbar system icons still get lost periodically, as has been reported by others. I did not find a better thread to add comments about that remaining bug, do you have a better suggestion than this thread?

As part of feedback, others have mentioned that it may be related to display scaling, and I do have mine set to 140% for my eyesight. I also noticed that my Personalizatin/Taskbar option for Multiple displays was set to On. I was sure it had been off, but... However, with it On it seems the Start icon and active window icons do show on the other monitor, but nothing else. Toggling either Multiple displays, or Use small buttons, seems to refresh the taskbar so the icons stay a while, but go away with other taskbar activity. I not that others have also mentioned this News feature uses Edge. I don't know if this is relavant but I also removed that browser.

Does anyone have new information on a fix for the missing taskbar icons bug?

Try3 said:

When I had the missing icons problem afterwards, I put News & interests back on the Taskbar, rebooted & removed it again. All my icons then appeared in the SysTray and have stayed that was since.

Denis

I've seen other reports of enable/disable fixing glitches in SysTray - seems to be a popular fix.

Thanks, folks, for the suggestions, but no help. Did the following:

Enable News/Interests in the Group Policy
Restart
Put Icon on the taskbar
Restart
Leaving icon on the taskbar, disable in Group Policy
Restart
System icons still get lost.

Any other ideas?

Thanks, Try3, but no joy.

From the state I mentioned above I did the following:

Enable in Group Policy

Restart. Icon shows on Taskbar. Turn off News/Interest from its option.

Restart. Verify login produces no icon.
Disable in Group Policy

Restart. No News/Interest option in taskbar but system icons still disappear

Enable in Group Policy. Restart.

Disable in Group Policy. Restart.

system icons still disappear

Sure hope Microsoft fixes this soon.

- - - Updated - - -

Just to be clear about the symptoms I am seeing for anyone reading my posts, if there is not at least an icon on the taskbar for the News/Interest feature then the systems icons regularly disappear. When either the feature's option of "Turn off" is chosen, or the feature is disabled in Group Policies, the bug appears. Thus I conclude the sole cause is this feature.

Try3 said:

That's not what I suggested.

• Check it's on in Group policy.
• Turn on News/Interest from its option so icon shows on Taskbar. Check system icons appear in SysTray.
• Restart.
• Turn off News/Interest from its option. Check system icons appear in SysTray.
• Turn off in Group policy if you wish. Check system icons appear in SysTray.

Denis

Hmmm... Sorry if I was unclear, but I think? I did all this as you specified.

• Check it's on in Group policy.
  Did that: "Enable in Group Policy", then restart.
  
  
• Turn on News/Interest from its option so icon shows on Taskbar. Check system icons appear in SysTray.
  After reboot "Icon shows on Taskbar." but did not mention that system icons do appear.
  
  
• Restart.
• Turn off News/Interest from its option. Check system icons appear in SysTray.
  Did that, system icons disappear.
  
  
• Turn off in Group policy if you wish. Check system icons appear in SysTray.
  Did that, system icons disappear.

I "think" I did everything you suggested, just with some added restarts between some steps. I just failed to mention what did and did not work at each stage.

I found a post on Answers.Microsoft.com from TRSmith3 in the middle of the page which matches my symptoms:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...5-bcc9d2cad1ef

You will see this if:

- KB5003214 is installed
- News and Interests on the taskbar is turned off, and
- Your DPI scaling (Settings|System|Display|Scale and layout is other (larger?) than 100%

Change any one of those, and the problem goes away. I found the most useful option to be uninstalling KB5003214. I have zero interest in the News and Interests widget.

- Note that the News/Interests feature in (optional) KB5003214 is now in the mandatory security update KB5003637 so not as easy to uninstall.
- As I mentioned I get this bug if it is turned off either by its option or by Group Policy.
- And my DPI setting is larger than 100% at 140%.

So I guess this behaviour is expected and unavoidable in my case? Hoping for a fix.