Browsing the web on a desktop computer today has generally become a test of one’s sanity. Your attempt to get anything from the internet gets smothered by an avalanche of ads, auto-playing videos, and even pop-ups asking permission to send more pop-ups in the form of notifications.
Most people never want a website to send them notifications — at least not while they are reading a page and certainly not while the page is closed. Thankfully, there is a way out to stop your browser from ever allowing such invasive invitations.
Here are the instructions to stop pestering pop-up notifications from appearing in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
In Chrome:Click the three-vertical-dot icon in the browser’s upper-right corner and select ‘Settings’. Then scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Advanced’, and then the ‘Site Settings’ option under the ‘Privacy and security’ header.
On the screen that appears next, click on ‘Notifications’, and then click the toggle against, ‘Ask before sending (recommended)’. This will result in the toggle turning from blue to gray and the text will read: ‘Blocked’.
If you want to allow only a small number of specific sites to send you notifications — sites like Gmail, for instance — you can add them as whitelisted exceptions on that same Chrome settings page: Click the ‘Add’ button next to the word ‘Allow’ and type in the URL of the site you want to whitelist using the format: mail.google.com/mail* or twitter.com/*. The asterisks serve as wildcards and tells Chrome to allow notifications from any site starting with the path you entered.
In Firefox: Click the three-line icon in the browser’s upper-right corner and select ‘Options’. Then click on ‘Privacy & Security’ in the menu at the left. Scroll down to the ‘Permissions’ section and click the ‘Settings’ button next to ‘Notifications’ and check the box next to ‘Block new requests asking to allow notifications’.
If you want to remove any websites you have already permitted to send notification delivery, click them in the list on that same screen and then click the ‘Remove Website’ button. You can also click the ‘Remove All Websites’ button to eliminate all whitelisted sites at once.
Firefox does not provide any way to add sites as exceptions from its settings section, so if you want to whitelist any websites, you will have to leave the notification permission active and then go visit those sites individually to get them to prompt you. You can then approve the requests one at a time and then go back to disable the notification permission once you are done.
In Safari: Go to ‘Safari’ then ‘Preferences’ using the top menu bar and then click on ‘Websites’, before clicking on ‘Notifications’ in the left-hand menu. Any websites that have asked for permission to show alerts will be listed here. You can go down the list and choose to allow or deny any or all of them.
You can also uncheck ‘Allow websites to ask for permission to send push notifications’ at the bottom of the window. You can also mute all notifications from Safari, and from other apps. by going to the ‘Notification Center’ of your Mac: Go to your ‘System Preferences’, then click on ‘Notifications’, find ‘Safari’ in the list on the left and select it.
Under the ‘Safari alert style’, select ‘None’.” This will only affect the banners that appear when you get a notification
Uncheck any (or all) of the following: ‘Show notifications on lock screen’, ‘Show in Notification Center’, ‘Badge app icon’, and ‘Play sound for notifications’.
If you want to silence your system temporarily, you can select ‘Do Not Disturb’ on the top of the left-hand list and then filling in the time or circumstance when you want to silence all notifications.
