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Comment by LoganDark | Hacker News Reader

That does not disable widgets. That only hides the button that toggles it.

(Edit 29 minutes after, because I can't seem to post anymore:)

It still runs its webview in the background and can be toggled with the keyboard shortcut, Win+W, even if the button is hidden.

In order to fully disable it you need a Group Policy or a registry hack.

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As a mac user it’s super frustrating because this is the shortcut to close a window so I see this widget flyout constantly.

I need to figure out a way to remap it but not having admin on my corporate machine I have little hope.

As another macOS user, it's absolutely insane how much worse Windows has been allowed to get over the years, and I sincerely wish that my mid-2015 MBP had never broken, because this is still absolutely awful even after almost 2 years of getting re-acquainted with an OS that I had already used for 7 years before my first Mac.

macOS was just too good.

What's the practical difference?

Having a web view loading garbage in the background consuming resources and probably leaking your data vs. …none of that?

It consumes a fair amount of resources just idling.

I'm currently using a laptop that was mid-to-low spec when I got it a couple years ago. It was chugging, especially during video calls. Uninstalling the Widgets feature was enough to make it useable again.

You still get the widgets in some interactions (like left swipe from the edge of the screen). There must be a way somewhere to customize those as well, but getting rid of widgets altogether is a lot faster.

Good to know, thanks for that.

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