Disable Widgets and Chat Apps to Improve Windows 11 Performance

As Windows 11 users, we all know that Chat and Widgets applications are pre-installed on the system. Their icons occupy quite an important place next to each other on the taskbar. And in practice, we may rarely use them.

However, what many users do not know is that these two applications consume a lot of system memory, even when they are not in use.

How Widgets and Chat apps affect Windows 11 performance

According to a study by Developer/IT Admin Michael Niehaus, Chat and Widgets apps rely on processes running in the background. They create multiple instances called msedgewebview2.exe, which is apparently related to Edge. Whether you actually use these two apps or not, they take up about a few hundred megabytes of memory from the moment you log into the OS, thus affecting Windows 11 performance.

For users who do not use Chat and Widgets often, you can save system resources and improve performance by removing or disabling these two applications.

How to remove Chat and Widgets icons from Taskbar

First, if you just don't want the chat and widgets to take up space on the taskbar, then you can simply remove, or hide them so they don't take up more memory by being accidentally enabled. But please note that this action does not prevent them from running in the background.

1. Right-click the taskbar to bring up the "Taskbar Settings" button, then click it.

2. The Personalization > Taskbar page will pop up. Here you will see a list of Taskbar items with options to show or hide them, including “Chat” and “Widgets” icons.

3. Turn off the Chat and Widgets options. When you close Chat, you will notice that its icon disappears from the taskbar. When you close Widgets, its icon will also disappear.

4. Finally, log out of Windows 11 and log back in again, then you will not see the Chat and Widgets icons on the taskbar any more.

If you want to resume using the Chat or Widget icon in the future, just turn on their toggle switch in the taskbar settings.

How to completely disable Widgets and Chat on Windows 11

Removing Widgets and Chat icons from the taskbar only prevents us from accidentally opening them and thus taking up more memory, it doesn't really disable these two apps. If you want to prevent them from running in the background at all, it's best to just uninstall them.

To uninstall Widgets from Windows 11, the easiest way is to use the command line.

1. Search for "CMD", and run Command Prompt as administrator.

2. Enter the following command and press Enter to execute it:

3. When the notice "Do you agree to all the source agreement terms?" appears, type "Y" and press Enter to confirm.

4. Then the uninstall process will start and you just need to wait for the "Successfully uninstalled" message to appear. Then the Widgets app is removed from Windows 11 completely.

The Chat app is a little different, as it is actually part of Microsoft Teams. If you don't need Teams, you can just uninstall it.

1. Open the Settings app and select "Apps" from the left sidebar.

2. In the Apps & features page, scroll down to find "Microsoft Teams".

3. Click the icon of the three dots on the right, select "Uninstall" and confirm the action.

4. Once the uninstallation is complete, the Chat app will be completely removed together.

With these operations, you can prevent these two applications from starting the corresponding processes, saving Windows 11 system resources that can be used for other frequently used applications.