Not every line of text on the lock screen is an advert. The weather forecast under the clock and the '2 new emails' line are status apps that you - or the default install - chose. They are genuinely useful to some people and pure clutter to others. Either way, they are yours to control, and this page shows exactly how.
After the ad boxes are gone, many people notice the lock screen still is not empty: a weather line, a calendar entry, a small row of icons with numbers. These are not Spotlight and not advertising. They are the two status slots Windows offers on the lock screen - one detailed, several quick - filled with apps. This page explains both slots, how to empty them, and the privacy consideration nobody mentions: this information is visible to anyone who glances at your locked PC.
This is the part of the lock screen that the fun facts toggle does not touch. Different owner, different switch.
The detailed status slot sits under the clock and shows one line of real content from one app: the Weather app's forecast is the default tenant on most installs, Calendar can show your next appointment, and Mail can preview your latest message. You choose the tenant on the Lock screen settings page, in the picker labelled for detailed status. If the line on your screen feels like it is showing too much of your life to the room, this picker - not any ad setting - is where that decision is made.
Quick status is a row of small icons, each allowed a number: unread mail, calendar, alarms, battery on a laptop, and similar glanceable counts. Individually harmless, together they make a lock screen feel busy, and they are the reason a 'cleaned' lock screen can still look cluttered in screenshots. The pickers for these sit next to the detailed status picker on the same Settings page. Removing an app from the row removes its icon and count; setting every slot to None removes the row itself.
What remains should be your picture, the time, the date - and nothing else. Nothing can quietly re-add itself to these slots; an app appears here only when it is picked here, which makes this the most stable part of the whole cleanup.
A lock screen is a public surface with private data on it. A detailed Calendar status can show the title of your next meeting; a Mail status can show who just wrote to you. In an office, a clinic, a classroom or a shared home, that may be more exposure than you intended when you locked the PC and walked away. Windows does have a related control outside this page: notification banners on the lock screen are governed in Settings then System then Notifications, where lock screen notifications can be switched off entirely. Treat status and notifications as one privacy decision, made once, deliberately.
Do not confuse these slots with the Widgets board - the weather-and-news panel that opens from the left of the taskbar. That is a separate feature with a separate switch in Taskbar settings, and it has nothing to do with the lock screen. People regularly remove lock screen status, still see the taskbar weather icon, and conclude the fix failed. It did not; they are looking at a different surface, and it has its own off switch in its own place.
The video deals with the advert boxes; pair it with the status settings on this page and the lock screen is not just ad-free, it is yours.
▶️ Watch Full VideoBecause the weather line is a status app, not part of the Spotlight feed or the fun facts system. It has its own picker on the same Settings page: Personalization, Lock screen, detailed status. Set that picker to None and the weather line goes with it.
Windows offers no built-in switch for that. The time and date are a fixed part of the lock screen design in Windows 10 and 11. Registry tricks that claim to hide them are unsupported and tend to break with updates - the honest answer is that this element stays.
They refresh when Windows and the apps next get the chance - typically around sign-in and while the PC is awake. A PC locked overnight can show slightly stale weather in the morning. It is a glance feature, not a live monitor, and it behaves like one.