How To Hide Or UnHide Widgets On Taskbar In Windows 11

News about a major event in the world, information about the weather in your region, and everything in between is what you can access using Widgets in Windows 11. With a push of a button, you can access everything that we just mentioned.

It is an excellent feature users enable to get constant updates about anything going on around the globe. But there are users who don’t particularly use or maybe don’t like Widgets being displayed on the taskbar.

You can either use Windows Settings or the Registry editor itself to easily hide or unhide Widgets on Taskbar.

Table of Contents

Using Windows Settings

Windows Settings allows you to change your entire desktop including what displays on the Taskbar.

Press Windows + I key to open Settings.
Go to Personalization.
Scroll down and select Taskbar.
Under Taskbar items, use the radio button to enable or disable Widgets.

Note: If you do not have a genuine version of Windows, Microsoft restricts you accessing some settings in Personalization. You cannot access settings like changing background images, contrast themes, colors, etc. However, you can access and change the task bar settings.

Using Registry Editor

If you cannot access these settings, you can change the value in the registry to enable or disable Widget. But you need to be careful when changing the values in the registry.

Changing the wrong values could affect your system’s performance. So make sure that you backup the registry before changing any of its values.

Press the Windows R key to open Run.
Type regedit and press enter to open Registry Editor.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
On the right panel, double-click on TaskbarDa.
Set Value Data to 0 to hide Widgets and 1 to unhide Widgets.
Click OK.
Restart your computer to save any changes made to the registry.

When enabled Widgets is displayed as a small icon that appears on the left most side of the taskbar.

Both the steps mentioned above only hides or displays Widgets. But you can completely disable or remove Widgets from taskbar and the entire system. You can either use Group Policy Editor or the command prompt to do this.

Disable Widgets Using Group Policy Editor

Before we start, Group Policy is not available on all edition of Windows. If your system does not have Group Policy Editor, you will need to enable it first.

Press the Windows + R key to open Run.
Type gpedit.msc and press enter to open Group Policy Editor.
On the left panel navigate to, Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Widgets.
Now on the right panel, double-click on Allow widgets.
Here, select Disable and click on Apply.
Restart your PC to apply changes made to the Group Policy Editor.

Uninstall Widgets Using Command Prompt

You can install any application in Windows using Command Prompt. Windows web experience pack manages Widgets. So you can uninstall this application to remove Widgets completely from your PC.