Add the Latest News to Your Desktop with Microsoft News Bar
News Bar is a new application now available from the Microsoft Store. Essentially a taskbar, the app can be pinned to your desktop to conveniently show you the latest news.
News Bar shares updates from thousands of publications and also displays your favorite stocks. Currently, the app is still in beta; Microsoft 10 users can download it for free here: News Bar beta
After the download and installation are complete, News Bar will display as a taskbar that pulls news from popular online news sources. A small screen will appear when you hover over a particular story; click on the news you want to read, and the app will direct you to the full article on Microsoft Edge.
If you aren’t familiar with taskbars, it may be helpful to know that you can customize it by going to Settings (at the bottom right) to change the setup.
From the Appearance tab, you are able to adjust:
- The position of the bar (Top, Bottom, Left, Right)
- Visualization (Text or Image)
- Background (Match Windows Theme or Transparent)
- Monitor (select the screen if you are using more than one)
I tried putting the bar on the right-hand side of the screen, and looks great to me 😀.
To stay updated on stock news, you can go to the Stocks tab and find your favorite companies. For example, I entered Apple in the search bar, then Apple’s stock board appeared as a news item in my News Bar:
In the Options tab, you can set the News Bar’s auto-restore to two hours, eight hours, or never. When you don’t want to see the News Bar, just select the Minimize symbol next to Settings to hide it.
With News Bar, you are now available to stay up-to-date with the latest news while working on your PC. As I mentioned above, the app is still in beta; however, I have found it very useful and look forward to using future versions as they become available. Try it!!
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