You can the customise the Windows 11 widgets panel as per your liking — here’s how to do it

Oct 11, 2021, 10:20 IST

Microsoft

Windows 11 brings a Widgets panel with improved personalisation.
The Widgets panel now gets a dedicated icon in the taskbar.
Users can customise the widgets panel as per their preferences.

Microsoft started rolling-out Windows 11 on compatible computers last week. The latest OS update from the company brings in tons of new and upgraded features that include the Widgets panel with improved personalisation, the snap layout feature, multiple virtual desktops support, a redesigned start menu and more.

Now, we have a dedicated Widgets icon on the taskbar that allows you to view weather updates, news, to-do list and more. This can be customised as per your need and requirements. In this article, we will explore ways of using the Widgets panel effectively on your updated Windows 11 computer.

The Widgets panel has two parts, a top-section that shows the current weather, the photos saved in your OneDrive, sports scores and others, while the news section has the top headlines and news articles of your interest.

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Here’s how you open the Widgets panel

Since Windows 11 has a dedicated icon for the Widgets panel, you can access it by clicking on the icon (that looks like a window having two rectangular sections in white and blue colour) or if you have a touch screen display, you just have to swipe left to open it. Alternatively, you can also press the Windows key + W to open the panel.
When you open the Widgets panel, you will see some common widgets by Microsoft such as weather updates, sports scores, your images from OneDrive and top headlines, news at the bottom of the panel.

Next, we will see how you can adjust the widgets and customise it.

Here’s how to customise the Widgets panel.

To move your widgets in the panel, long-press on the top of the widget that you wish to move, and change its position before releasing the press.
On each widget, there is a three-dot icon at the top-right corner for more options. Here you can change the size of the widgets, remove the widgets or customise it as per your preference.
For example- you can change the size of the weather widget from large to medium or small. You can also customise it to see the temperature in degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit.
To see more information about a particular widget, you just have to click on the name of the widget at the top-left corner that will open up a separate page with additional information.
You can also add widgets to the Widgets panel by clicking on the Add widgets button that can be found between the top-section and the news sections. Here you can browse through all the widgets available and choose which one you would want to see in the panel. Currently, all the widgets available are from Microsoft, but you can expect to see more third-party widgets with further updates to the OS.

Customise the News feed

The News feed that is below the Add widgets button has the top stories section, followed by individual stories. These stories come with reaction buttons such as those found on Facebook and you can react to them with various emoticons such as a heart, thumbs-up or like, angry, sad and others). You can customise the News feed as per your preferences and interests. Here’s how to do it.

Select the three-dots icon next to each news story or headline and you can choose to see more or fewer stories on similar topic, hide the stories from that source, save it for later or report the story.

Personalise your interests

When you click on the “Add widgets” button, a page will appear that will allow you to manage your interests. You can also open the same page by clicking the three-dot icon next to a news story and selecting manage interests.
This will open Microsoft Start page, the settings page for the Edge browser, here you can choose your interests that will tell Microsoft to show you news stories that may be of interest to you. You can choose the interests from any categry such News, Sports, Travel, Health, Entertainment etc. When you click on them, you choose specific topics such as Cricket, Football and others when you click on “Sports”.
In the same page, you can also see your “saved” news items, “history” of articles you have read or personalise your experience by changing the language by clicking on “Experience Settings”.
You can also toggle on or off some features such as weather widget, reaction buttons or the finance widget.

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