June 2021 updates disrupt taskbar with 'News and Interests'

Windows[German]With the June 8, 2021 security updates for Windows 10, Microsoft also forcibly introduced the "News and Interesting Topics" feature. In the meantime, some users notice that the taskbar function is disturbed and icons in the tray area (status area) of the taskbar are missing. Is once again a bug with announcement, since the problem already occurred in the preview updates at the end of May 2021.


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Microsoft activates feature via update

Microsoft started since April 2021 to introduce in Windows 10 (first in version 21H1, later in 20H2) the feature "News and interesting"via update. An icon in the notification area of the taskbar can be used to display the weather forecast and a feed with current headlines from news magazines.

News and interests on the Windows taskbar
News and interests on the Windows taskbar, Source: Microsoft

While the whole thing was first tested with Windows Insiders, the feature is available for all Windows 10 users with the preview update KB500321 from May 26, 2021 for Windows 10 version 2004, 20H2, 21H1 and the Windows Server counterparts. With the cumulative updates of June 8, 2021 (update KB5003635 for Windows 10 V1909 and update KB5003637 for Windows 10 V2004 to 21H1, see Patchday: Windows 10 updates (June 8, 2021)), this feature will forcefully come to all systems. This even affects Windows 10 Enterprise, as this comment within my German blog confirms.

User messages about the problem

I'll take it up separately on the blog, as I received a few user messages about this bug. Besides a message on Facebook "and when the quality update KB5003637 comes, it knocks the systray away" another German reader wrote:

Since the June patch for 1909 (enterprise) the tray icon area is gone or disturbed on several devices on ours. Does anyone else have this problem..

The colleagues from Bleeping Computer have also mentioned this in this article. When I read the first reports, I immediately remembered the newly introduced feature. Because I had reported exactly this problem in the blog post Windows 10 21H1: StrangeTaskbar issues after update KB5003214.


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News and interest

If the phenomenon occurs that icons in the tray area of the taskbar disappear and you have deactivated the "News and interests" feature: Activate the features and just turn off its display. I outlined how to do this in the post Disable and configure Windows 10 feature News and interests. In addition, there are group policies to disable the feature. You also may set the DPI scaling (Settings|System|Display|Scale and layout is other (larger?) back to 100% (see also).

Similar articles:
Disable and configure Windows 10 feature News and interests
Patchday: Windows 10-Updates (June 8, 2021)
Windows 10 21H1: StrangeTaskbar issues after update KB5003214


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2 Responses to June 2021 updates disrupt taskbar with 'News and Interests'

  1. Anonymous says:

    Hi

    If you do not want to uninstall CU 2021-06-09 KB5003637 and the other combination of workarounds mentioned do not work, you can set the "News And Interests" to "Show Icons Only" (and also disable "Open On hover" if you prefer) as a temporary measure to prevent the Taskbar Icons from disappearing/messed up until the issue is resolved.
    Also refer to the comment posted at : https://www.windowslatest.com/2021/06/11/windows-10-kb5003637-update-could-break-your-taskbar/#comment-5415992895
    Hope this helps.

    Anonymous.

  2. EP says:

    Microsoft has recently sort of acknowledge a problem with the "news and interests" button on the taskbar having "blurry text" here for Win10 v2004/20H2/21H1 with KB5001391 or higher update (like KB5003637) installed:
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/status-windows-10-21h1#1629msgdesc

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