Microsoft knows what the Windows 10 taskbar really needs: News and Weather. That the My People icon has not been disabled, but surely all Windows users want one-click access to the latest news – right?
Microsoft is already testing this change in Insider builds of Windows 10. As of January 6, 2021, with Insider build 21286, people testing the unstable versions of Windows 10 will see the widget.
It will appear to the left of your notification area (often, but incorrectly, called the ‘system tray’.) It shows the current weather in your area – right on the taskbar. If you click on it, you will see news reports, more information about the weather, movements in the stock market and sports scores. Microsoft calls it “an integrated stream of dynamic content, such as news and weather that is updated throughout the day.”
Of course, you can customize what you want to see in the feed, and you can hide this weather and news widget, just as you can hide the My People widget today. All you have to do is right-click on your taskbar and uncheck it.
Microsoft is testing variations on this feature, so it may not look identical when it reaches your computer. Based on Microsoft’s development schedule, we would expect this feature to hit stable Windows 10 computers with a major update planned for the fall of 2021 – or, if Microsoft is really in a hurry, the spring of 2021.
