Windows 11 users: prepare for lock screen widgets that might annoy you (but Microsoft is doing something about that)
Windows 11 and 10 users can breathe a sigh of relief, because there’s news that isn’t about bringing more AI into the heart of Windows 11, or about the seemingly inevitable end of Windows 10 – although I don’t know if this development will be a be a cause for joy. Microsoft is fully rolling out the MSN lock screen widgets after testing the feature for the past four months.
Apparently the feature is still rolling out, so you might not see it quite yet, but these widgets should appear on your lock screen very soon (if they don’t already). Microsoft is rolling out this change for Windows 11 and 10 via a server-side update, so the widgets just suddenly appear – and so far: Windows Latest notes that users do not receive them warmly.
Part of the problem is that the lock screen widgets shown are preset by Microsoft and cannot be customized or customized to your preferences. The widgets will appear if you enable them, or have already enabled the ‘Weather or More’ option in the Settings app.
To be precise, you will find this option at the following location:
Institutions > Personalization > Lock screen
An all or nothing proposition – at least for now
The preconfigured MSN widgets include Microsoft Money, Sports, and Weather, but you can’t currently choose which to keep and which to leave out. I imagine this is where a lot of the dissatisfaction with the feature comes from, as it seems like you want widgets on your lock screen, but not all of them – well, it’s a matter of bad luck. You are forced to have all of them, or none of them (if you disable them).
Why can’t you customize these widgets individually and disable the ones you don’t like, like you can with other individual widgets like Mail or Calendar? The good news is that you’ll be able to do that soon, as Microsoft has promised that this capability will be available to Windows 11 and 10 users.
We don’t know when this important change will happen, but hopefully we’ll see this coming sooner rather than later, because we can’t imagine this is a monumental task for Microsoft.