Personalization Enable or Disable Widgets on Lock Screen in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable showing widgets on the lock screen for your account or all users in Windows 11.

You can stay informed and efficient with dynamic updates that bring weather, finance, sports, traffic, and app notifications right to your lock screen.

Starting with Windows 11 build 26100.3624 (24H2), support for lock screen widgets (previously referred to as “Weather and more”) arrives on devices in the European Economic Area (EEA). You can add, remove, and rearrange lock screen widgets such as Weather, Watchlist, Sports, Traffic, and more. Any widget that supports the small sizing option can be added. To customize your lock screen widgets, navigate to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen.

As part of this, Microsoft is also adding support for a new group policy called Disable Widgets On Lock Screen that will allow IT administrators to disable lock screen widgets without disabling widgets elsewhere on PCs they manage. This policy is only supported in EEA regions at this time but will expand to include other regions in the future as well.

If you do not have this feature available yet for this build, you can enable it using the command below with ViVeTool to have the options in the tutorial available after a restart.

vivetool /enable /id:50179255,53672489





EXAMPLE: Widgets on lock screen (Win+L)







1 Open Settings (Win+I).

2 Click/tap on Personalization on the left side, and click/tap on Lock screen on the right side under. (see screenshot below)



3 Turn On (default) or Off Your widgets for what you want. (see screenshots below)


4 You can now close Settings if you like.





1 Do step 2 (on) or step 3 (off) below for what you want.

This is the default setting.

(Contents of REG file for reference)





(Contents of REG file for reference)

4 Save the .reg file to your desktop.

5 If you have Smart App Control turned on, you will need to unblock the downloaded REG file.

6 Double click/tap on the downloaded .reg file to merge it.

7 When prompted, click/tap on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK to approve the merge.

8 You can delete the downloaded .reg file if you like.

You must be signed in as an administrator to use this option.

The Local Group Policy Editor is only available in the Windows 11 Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions.

All editions can use Option Four to configure the same policy.

1 Open the Local Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc).

2 Navigate to the policy location below in the left pane of the Local Group Policy Editor. (see screenshot below)



3 In the right pane of Widgets in the Local Group Policy Editor, double click/tap on the Disable Widgets On Lock Screen policy to edit it. (see screenshot above)

4 Do step 5 (enable) or step 6 (disable) below for what you want.

This is the default setting to allow using Option One and Option Two.

This will turn off and prevent using Option One and Option Two.

7 You can now close the Local Group Policy Editor if you like.

You must be signed in as an administrator to use this option.

This is the same policy in Option Three.

1 Do step 2 (on) or step 3 (off) below for what you want.

This is the default setting to allow using Option One and Option Two.

(Contents of REG file for reference)

This will turn off and prevent using Option One and Option Two.

(Contents of REG file for reference)

4 Save the .reg file to your desktop.

5 If you have Smart App Control turned on, you will need to unblock the downloaded REG file.

6 Double click/tap on the downloaded .reg file to merge it.

7 When prompted, click/tap on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK to approve the merge.

8 You can now delete the downloaded .reg file if you like.


That's it,
Shawn Brink