Small widgets can display important information in Windows 10. News and Interests is one such widget which shows weather, stocks, sports and other news.
But there is a disadvantage with this app!
Windows 10 users who are using old builds have complained of high memory usage. Even people with 36GB RAM have 99% usage when this widget is activated.
News and Interests taking up memory has been a long waiting problem. The main reason is the memory leak in the Windows programming code. Hence, this app continues to gulp memory instead of releasing it.
Generally, browsers like Chrome, Edge, Firefox use lot of memory. But when News and Interests starts using extra memory, then the computer slows down. Pagefile size will increase after RAM has been completely used up resulting in less hard disk space.
To resolve the memory leak issue, the only solution is to update Windows 10 to the latest October 2022 update. I see the latest releases have patched up the memory leak.
For a more permanent solution, you can totally disable News and Interest widget before Microsoft comes out with a fix.
Windows 10 News and Interests memory usage – What is the Reason ?
Feeds is a process related to News and Interests widget. Search is another important tool where you can find files, images, videos based on your preferred indexing options.
Users complained of high memory usage due to Feeds and Search. This issue can be because of different reasons. But, in the Task Manager if you find Feeds and Search taking a lot of CPU and RAM, then these can be the culprits.
This problem arises in Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung etc and all kinds of laptops and desktops. But some are error free and don’t have issues.
In this solution guide, let’s see how to fix News and Interests taking up memory.
Turn Off News and Interests widget
Since Feeds is connected to news notifications, you need to temporarily turn it off.
- Right-click the Taskbar and click on News and Interests.
- Click the option Turn Off.
It should make the News and Interests widget disappear from the Taskbar. Now check the Task Manager. See the amount of CPU and RAM used. If they are reaching near 90 to 100%, then proceed to the second solution.
If you see the feeds process, kill it.
Disable News and Interests using Group Policy Editor
If you are using Windows 10 Pro and higher version, you have administrator privileges.
- Search for group policy editor in Windows 10 search.
- Go to
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > News and interests
3. Double click the option – Enable news and interests on the taskbar.
4. Check the option Disabled on the next pop-up screen.
It will permanently stop the processes related to News and Interests widget. Restart if required.
Disable News and Interests using Registry Editor
If you are using Windows 10 Home, you might not have access to group policy editor. Then you can make use of the registry editor.
- Type Registry editor in the Windows 10 search.
- Go to
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds
3. Go to the item – ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode and set the value to 2.
It should stop the high memory usage of News and Interests widget in Windows 10.
Check for Windows Updates
It is found that the KB5010342 update has something to do with feeds high memory usage. There can be other quality updates that can resolve the problem. So press Win + I keys for Settings > Update & Security.
Check for the latest updates. As of October 2022, KB5018482 is the latest cumulative update with version 22H2.
I’m not having any problems with my computer configuration and Windows 10 Pro.
The latest updates keep the feeds process in suspended mode to prevent high cpu and memory usage.
AMD and NVIDIA driver updates
We connect several devices to our computer. Some are internal and others are external. GPU graphic cards are mostly from NVIDIA and there are other companies. There can be incompatibility between processor and graphic cards. In-built gpu cards also can cause problems.
- Press Win + R and type devmgmt.msc.
- Open the Device Manager.
- Display Adapters > {Graphics card}
- Right-click and update the driver.
Windows 10 automatically searches for the latest drivers and installs them. Otherwise, you can manually download them from the NVIDIA graphics drivers’ page and install them.
Third-party Security Tools
Naïve Windows 10 users will install multiple anti-virus and firewalls. One of the users installed BitDefender Firewall and had to disable it. Then you turn off the News and Interests widget. Both these things helped him reduce the memory usage.
In most cases Microsoft Defender is sufficient for your security concerns. Windows Security center has many options which prevents many of the problems.
Conclusion
Most probably one of the above solutions should fix news and interests using all memory and cpu usage problem.
You can try uninstalling programs, disable startup programs etc if the above fixes don’t work. The last resort is to take it to a pc expert who can troubleshoot your problem.
Even 32GB RAM systems were having the problem. The cause is not less RAM, but the processes. Even increasing the Virtual memory can help sometimes. I always prefer SSD over HDD for faster operations and prevent memory hogs.
