Question from Rita: My laptop has Windows 11 on it and when I turned it on yesterday morning I noticed that it had installed an update.
Ever since the update there’s been a little Weather icon on the Taskbar right beside the Start button.
Every time I move my mouse towards either the Start button or the icon just to the right of the Weather icon a screen pops up showing the weather along with what appears to be about a thousand news reports.
This is irritating me to no end. Is there any way to remove that Weather icon from the Taskbar? I looked through the apps list and I can’t find anything related to weather. And there’s no Weather setting in the Taskbar settings either.
Rick’s answer: Rita, that Weather icon is actually one of the Windows widgets and the screen that pops up when you hover your mouse over it is the “Widgets board”.
If you want to completely remove the Weather icon from the Taskbar, you can only do so by disabling the entire Widgets board. This short video shows how, step-by-step:
Do you prefer following written instructions? If so, here you go…
1 – Right-click on the Taskbar and click Taskbar settings.
2 – Toggle the “Widgets” setting to Off.
There you go – the Weather icon is now gone.
If you ever decide that you want to place the Weather icon back on the Taskbar you can do so by repeating the steps above and toggling the “Widgets” setting back to On.
But here’s the thing…
If I understand your question correctly, it appears that your primary reason for wanting to remove the Weather icon is to prevent the Widgets board from opening up when you hover your mouse over it.
If you’d prefer to keep the Weather icon on the Taskbar but prevent it from automatically opening the Widgets board, you can easily do that. Just follow these steps:
1 – Click on the Weather icon to open the Widgets board.
2 – Click on the Widgets board’s Settings icon in the top-right corner of the board (it looks like the silhouette of a person).
3 – Toggle the “Open Widgets board on hover” setting to Off.
That’s all there is to it. If you only chose to prevent the Widgets board from opening automatically you can move your mouse pointer over the Weather icon all you want and it won’t cause the Widgets board to open.
However, you’ll still be able to open the Widgets board at any time by actually clicking on the Weather icon.