Microsoft to Clean Up Windows 11’s Widgets Board, Focus on ‘Calm’

As part of its pledge to improve Windows 11, Microsoft is looking to clean up the Widgets board, including hiding the MSN News feed and the aggressive articles that pop up. 

Microsoft is experimenting with the change in a new Windows 11 preview build rolling out to Insiders in the Experimental channel. “One of the areas we’re looking at closely across the operating system is the idea of ‘calm,’” Corporate VP 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 prompted Microsoft to make the Discover feed in the Widgets board “quieter by default.” Currently, it pops up the moment you open Widgets, taking up a prominent position by showing you various articles from MSN News. It can bombard you with various clickbait stories and photos, including those about US politics, which can be distressing. 

(Credit: Microsoft)

The new preview build removes the Discover feed and MSN News from the default view, placing them in a separate tab. The company published an image showing the before-and-after. The revamp removes the in-your-face articles and replaces the Widget board with a more minimalist, white-space approach. The change helps address one of our own complaints about Windows 11: the default Widgets mode can be a noisy mess and potentially alienate users. 

The preview release arrives after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said this week that the company is working to “win back” consumers by focusing on fundamentals and prioritizing quality. Although Windows has long dominated the PC market, Microsoft seems to be conceding that it’s losing its grip on consumers, as some are considering alternatives such as Apple’s affordable MacBook Neo and Linux distributions like SteamOS and Ubuntu. 

The calm philosophy is notable since Windows has long faced complaints about bloat and intrusive Microsoft-recommended apps popping up on the OS. We’ll be curious to see how far this idea goes, but the decision to revamp the Widget board seems to be a sign of things to come for the mainstream Windows 11 release. 

In his blog post, Ash added that the company has been making “progress on system performance across several areas of the operating system,” including reducing memory usage. “Several of these changes are beginning to roll out to Windows Insiders today, and we will be sharing more of our improvements in Widgets and in other areas over the coming months,” he said. 

The company is also addressing complaints that Windows 11 is becoming weighed down 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.”

About Our Expert

Michael Kan

Principal Reporter

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Experience

I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start 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’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.

Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s 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 to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.

I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I’m now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I’m always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.

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