How to Disable Chrome Notifications for Sites
Many websites ask to send you notifications when you visit them, this comes in the form of an obnoxious pop-up request in the upper left corner of the Chrome web browser that interferes with your web browsing.
If you use Chrome as your default web browser on Mac or PC and are tired of playing another new game of ‘kill the pop-ups’ you may wish to change the notifications request behavior for Chrome, or completely disable it to block all notification requests.
How to Block Chrome Site Notification Requests on Mac, Windows, Linux
This works to adjust the Notifications settings on Chrome for Mac, Linux, and Windows.
- Open Chrome if you haven’t done so already
- Go to Chrome > Preferences > Security & Privacy > Site Settings > and scroll down to find “Notifications”
- You’ll be presented with three options for Chrome site notifications:
- Sites can ask to send notifications – this is the default with the pop-up
- Use quieter messaging: Sites are blocked from interrupting you when they ask to send notifications – this is more subtle and the request goes into the URL bar
- Don’t allow sites to send notifications: Features that need notifications won’t work – this disables the feature and gives you no notifications request and maximum peace of mind
- Choose “Don’t allow sites to send notifications” to completely block all requests, or select ‘Use quieter messaging’ to have a less intrusive notification request system
If you had disabled this in Chrome before you may have found in a later update the requests turned themselves back on, perhaps because the interface in how you manage and disable notification requests has changed, or perhaps because preferences were cleared at some point in time.
You can also access the same notifications settings panel in Chrome by going to the following URL from any Chrome browser:
chrome://settings/content/notifications
What the default “Sites can ask to send notifications” looks like in Chrome
This is the default, where you are presented with a site and browsing obstructing pop-up on every site that wants to pelt you with notifications in Chrome.
What “Use quieter messaging” looks like in Chrome
The ‘quieter messaging’ approach is probably optimal for users who want to use site notifications with Chrome, but don’t want the large pop-up showing up all the time. Instead you can click on the notification request in the URL bar and decide to accept or block from there.
What “Don’t allow sites to send notifications” looks like
This is by far the most peaceful choice if you don’t like notifications requests, since you’ll no longer get any pestering requests in Chrome for notifications. You’ll be able to browse the web without any notifications requesting.
Of course Chrome isn’t the only browser that allows individual websites to ask to send you notifications, and Safari does this too. If you’re equally annoyed with them in Safari, you can disable website notification requests in Safari for Mac as well.
Like any setting, these can always be changed if your preferences change down the road.
