Web browsers now allow websites to show you notifications. Visit many news and shopping websites, and you’ll see a popup telling you the website wants to show notifications on your desktop. You can disable these notification prompts in your web browser if they annoy you.
Google Chrome
To disable this feature in Chrome, click the menu button and select “Settings”.
Click the “Show Advanced Settings” link at the bottom of the Settings page and then click the “Content Settings” button under Privacy.
Scroll down to the Notifications category and select “Do not allow any site to show notifications”.
Even after you select this setting, websites you’ve given permission to show notifications will still be able to show notifications. Click “Manage Exceptions” to view a list of websites you’ve given permission to show notifications and revoke the permission, if you like.
If you want to give an individual site the ability to show notifications in the future, you can click the “Manage Exceptions” button here and give a site permission to show notifications.
Mozilla Firefox
Firefox doesn’t allow you to disable all web notification prompts in its normal Options window. You have to change this setting from the hidden about:config page.
To access it, type about:config into Firefox’s address bar and press Enter. You’ll be shown a warning. Be careful when using the about:config page, as you could cause problems with Firefox by changing some settings. Click “I accept the risk” if you’re ready to continue.
Type “notifications” into the search box. Double-click the dom.webnotifications.enabled option that appears. This will change the setting to “false”, which means web notifications will be disabled in Firefox.
This change will completely disable all web notifications, so you can’t choose to receive notifications from one or two websites while preventing other websites from asking to show notifications.
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge gained support for notifications in Windows 10’s Anniversary Update. However, Microsoft provides no way to disable notifications entirely and prevent websites from asking to show notifications.
All you can do is click “No” when you’re asked if you want to let a website show notifications. Edge will at least remember your preference for the current website, but other websites will still be able to prompt you.
Apple Safari
Safari allows you to stop websites from requesting permission to send notifications. To find this option, click Safari > Preferences.
Select the “Notifications” tab and, at the bottom of the window, uncheck the “Allow websites to ask for permission to send push notifications” box.
Websites you’ve already given permission to send notifications will still have permission to send notifications even after you uncheck this option. You can see and manage the list of websites with permissions to send notifications in this window.
If you change your mind in the future, you can always go into your web browser’s settings and re-enable web notifications.