How To Stop Getting So Many Notifications on Your Mac

If you are overwhelmed by notifications from apps and websites, here's how to get it under control. You can not only stop the ones you are getting now, but also prevent more from being added in the future.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to stop getting so many notifications on your Mac. 
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If you find that you're getting a lot of notifications on your Mac from apps, from websites, maybe things you don't even recognize. There's a way to get that under control. The first thing you want to do is go into System Settings and then from there choose Notifications. Then you're going to see a list of application's notifications here and every app that you've got that will send you out notifications will be listed. So you can choose an app and then go into the Settings and customize how notifications are sent. So, for instance, you can choose None to have notifications not appear on the screen at all but then still have them show up in the Notifications Center with this switch here. Or if you'd rather never see notifications anywhere for this app you can just completely switch it off. 
Now you're also going to see some websites here. You can do the same thing for a website. But for better control what you probably want to do is go into Safari for that first. So when you're visiting a website you may see something like this. A quick little popup question that asks you if you want to get a notification. This maybe why you're getting so many notifications. It's so easy to accept this or click the OK button or whatever appears and then start getting notifications from the site. You can see how different websites show this in a different way with slightly different graphics. It's so easy to skip past this by saying Allow. Maybe you think it's just asking you for permission to use your location or that there is a disclaimer on the website or something like that. Then you end up getting notifications. Some websites do it in a much better way. For instance, MacRumors here has an icon at the top. You have to click on that to go to a special page that then allows you to subscribe to Notifications. But most websites that use it will just hit you with this quick little question here and it's easy to misread it and accept. When you do accept it should prompt you with Confirmation here. But again it's super easy to accidentally allow it. 
Once you allow it you may start getting tons of notifications and have no idea how to turn them off. In Safari you can go to Safari, Settings and then go to the websites. This is the section where you can control individual settings for different sites. One of those is Notifications. Anything that you've allowed to send notifications is going to appear in here. It's going to give you the chance to change that Allow to a Deny. You could also select and then remove. That will kind of reset it so it is going to prompt you again the next time you're there. 
But perhaps the most important setting here is this little checkbox at the bottom. If you turn this Off then these sites are no longer allowed to actually request permission from you. So uncheck this to avoid accidentally giving permission to a site when you're in a rush.
Now for the sites you have allowed you can always go here into System Settings and go to the site and change how the notifications can appear. So you can kind of choose a middle ground. If you want to see notifications but maybe only when you choose Notification Center then you can select None here and then Show in Notification Center. 
Now, of course, the sites that appear here are going to be ones that are in Safari. For other browsers, like Goggle Chrome, then you're just going to have a setting here for the entire app. But you can control this on a per site basis on other browsers as well. So, for instance, in Goggle Chrome here I can go to Chrome, Settings, and there I can go to Privacy & Security and then you can scroll down here to Notifications. Then you've got your default behavior here. So you can set that to Don't Allow Sites to Send Notifications. Turn them all Off. You can also block sites from asking you if they want to send you notifications. At the bottom you'll see all the sites that are allowed to send you notifications and you can select them and then change that setting. 
So one last thing. If you do go into System Settings and you see your application notifications list is super long don't feel like you need to tackle it all at once. Maybe just do some now, some later until you get through the whole list. Once you get that under control you should be able to actually look at the icons that you're getting for the notifications and quickly identify which new app or new website is sending you them and then find them here to turn them Off. 
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “How To Stop Getting So Many Notifications on Your Mac”

Paul Werner

2 years ago

Gary, thank you for the timely tips, they are always appreciated. I now know how to handle those pesky notifications.

Gillie Runge

How do I print the instructions for this notification! Thanks! I'm not a computer person but I need to digest the instructions step by step (80y) : )

Gary Rosenzweig

Gillie: There is a transcript above if you want it. But no "article" or anything like that to print. I do video tutorials, not articles.

Comments Closed.

How To Stop Getting So Many Notifications on Your Mac

Comments: 3 Responses to “How To Stop Getting So Many Notifications on Your Mac”

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