Tech Tip

I discovered a feature that was added to Windows 10 recently that I knew nothing about, but it’s really good. 

I know that Windows 11 is going to be adding a “widgets feature,” but in reading an article about it, I read about the new “News and Interests” widget-like app that got added to Windows 10 about four months ago.  (It’s very similar to the upcoming widget in Windows 11, but that will be more robust.)  As I said, I knew nothing about it, tracked it down and saw it was not enabled (I assume by default), and enabled it and tweaked some preferences.  It’s not perfect, but I like it A LOT.

Basically, the widget app sits on your Taskbar toward the right, and when you merely hover your mouse pointer over the icon, a window pops up with news, weather, your stocks information and more, which you can adjust a bit to your preferences.

To access it, you right-click on the Taskbar and look for “News and Interests” near the top of the pop-up list.  There will be a right-arrow, and you click on that to open the options.  I selected “Icon only” and “Open when hover.”  (The “Icon and text” option added the temperature, which was nice but I thought unnecessary, especially since the temperature will show when the window pops up, and it took up real estate on the Taskbar.)  To change the preferences of the kind of news and interests it will show, you just click on the “…” in the upper right corner.  It’s very nice.

This is what the icon looks like in the Taskbar – it’s the yellow circle.

Well, in fairness, this may be what the icon looks like.  The icon is actually a graphic of the weather, and it was sunny day at the time.  At night, it'll be a crescent moon icon.

And right now, it's a bit overcast here in West Los Angeles, so we don't have a nice sunny icon, but instead  there's something different.  Mind you, I can also look out my window and see that it's overcast, but as long as you need to have an icon and it's for a news feature, why the heck not?! --