As part of your They commit to improving Windows 11Microsoft is looking to clean up the Widgets dashboard, including hiding the MSN News feed and aggressive articles that appear.
Microsoft is experimenting with the change in a new Windows 11 build preview be implemented for Insiders in the Experimental channel. “One of the areas we are looking closely at across the OS is the idea of ’calm,'” corporate vice president Marcus Ash wrote in a blog post. “When you’re designing an experience for over a billion users, what are the right defaults that are easy, simple, and limit distractions?”
This approach led Microsoft to make the Discover feed in the Widgets dashboard “quieter by default.” Currently, it appears when you open Widgets and takes a prominent position by showing you various MSN News articles. It can bombard you with various click-provoking stories and photos, including those about American politics, which can be distressing.
(Credit: Microsoft)
The new preview version removes the Discover feed and MSN News from the default view and places them in a separate tab. The company posted an image showing the before and after. The revamp removes direct articles and replaces the widget dashboard with a more minimalist white space approach. The change helps address one of our own complaints about Windows 11: the default widget mode can be a noisy disaster and potentially alienate users.
The soft launch comes after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said this week that the company is working to “win back” consumers focusing on fundamentals and prioritizing quality. Although Windows has long dominated the PC market, Microsoft appears to be admitting that it is losing control among consumers, as some are considering alternatives like Apple’s affordable one. macbook neo and Linux distributions such as SteamOS and Ubuntu.
The quiet philosophy is notable since Windows has long faced complaints about inflate and intrusive recommended by Microsoft applications appearing in the operating system. We’ll be curious to see how far this idea goes, but the decision to revamp the widget dashboard appears to be a sign of things to come for the main version of Windows 11.
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In his blog post, Ash added that the company has been making “system performance progress in several areas of the operating system,” including reducing memory usage. “Several of these changes are starting to roll out today to Windows Insiders, and we’ll be sharing more of our improvements in Widgets and other areas over the coming months,” he said.
The company is also addressing complaints that Windows 11 is being affected by AI. Ash noted: “In Snipping Tool and Photos, we’ve removed the ‘Ask Copilot’ button entirely. And in Notepad, we’ve replaced the generic Copilot icon with a clearer ‘Writing Tools’ label that better describes what it does.”
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Michael Kan
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I have been a journalist for more than 15 years. I started as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I currently reside in San Francisco, but previously spent more than five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I have covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing more than 600 stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over expanding satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I scoured the FCC files for the latest news and drove to remote corners of California to test Starlink cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly collecting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint report investigation with motherboard.
I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages took me camping vs. Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. Now I’m tracking how the AI-driven memory shortage is affecting the entire consumer electronics market. I’m always eager to learn more, so hit the comments with your feedback and send me tips.
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