However that’s not always the case; and even if it were, any user action required from you can easily wait a bit longer. Notifications can be especially annoying when you’re hard at work or enjoying your favorite game or TV show. To stop these alerts from being intrusive, we recommend disabling them, hiding them temporarily, or enabling only the important ones. We’ll show you how to do disable computer notifications on Windows.
How to Permanently Disable Notifications
When you really must focus, you should know how to turn off all notifications on your computer. This kind of muting is controlled by a notifications center. To ensure that the Focus assist setting does not interfere with your permanent and total disabling of the system notifications, keep it turned “Off.” Windows 10 has a similar mechanism for turning off all notifications except for one thing: the menu placement and wording for the relevant options (including Focus assist) differs slightly when compared with Windows 11.
How to Dismiss Notifications
Instead of turning off all Windows alerts and pop-ups, it may be far more convenient to quietly dismiss the notifications to the desktop background. There are two ways to do this: using the Action Center, and through a notification timeout. Use the keyboard shortcut Win + A to open Action Center. If it has any notifications, you’ll see a white outline around them. Just hit the Del key to remove the notifications. Alternatively, dismiss notifications by setting a timer. In Windows 11, search for an option called “Notifications timeout after” in System settings. The timer option is available under “Accessibility -> Visual effects.” From the “Dismiss notifications after this amount of time” drop-down menu, choose the amount of time you want to allow a notification to remain on your screen. It can be as short as five seconds before the notification is dismissed automatically. While Windows 10 doesn’t have a Notifications timeout button, you can set a timer manually from Registry Editor.
How to Disable Specific App Notifications
If you want to disable notifications for select apps while retaining them for others, it’s possible to do so. To disable specific app notifications on Windows:
How to Temporarily Hide Notifications With Focus Assist
To get the benefits of computer notifications without them being too intrusive, we recommend enabling Windows Focus assist, an advanced power user feature accessible from the Windows system tray. It can minimize distractions by temporarily hiding notifications with an “automatic rule.” For example, if you set quiet hours for nighttime, you won’t be disturbed by anything other than priority messages. Likewise, you can restrict all notifications to “Alarms only”, say, when playing a game. This option is also useful while using an app in full-screen mode (for example, while watching Netflix/YouTube in a web browser). If you want to set down rules for the types of notifications you receive, scroll to the “Focus assist” section and select the “Priority only” or “Alarms only” radio button as applicable. (By default, the radio button is set to “Off.”) The “Priority only” option allows you to receive notifications for important contacts and apps while silencing the rest. Click on the “Customize priority list” link below this option to configure whether to include notifications for VoIP, reminders (regardless of app used), and pinned taskbar contacts. Lastly, go to the list of apps under Priority list. Here you can add/remove apps based on whether you want them to send notifications on priority.
1. How do I view notification history in Windows?
All old Windows notifications are stored in a database (.db) format. View them at “C: -> Users -> Username -> AppData -> Local -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Notifications.” To open this DB file use an application like Thumbs Viewer available on GitHub.
2. How do I turn off Windows lock screen notifications?
In Windows 11, the lock screen notifications can be easily switched off from “System -> Notifications.” Deselect the “Show notifications on the Lock Screen” checkbox under Notifications. If required, disable reminders and incoming VoIP calls on the lock screen from the same location. In Windows 10, these options show up under “System -> Notifications & Actions.”
3. How do I disable Windows notifications sounds?
Windows notifications sounds can be turned off from “System -> Notifications” in Windows 11, and “System -> Notifications & Actions” in Windows 10. However, this only affects the app sounds but not the sudden warning messages. To disable notification sounds for general system alerts: Image credit: Dean Pugh on Unsplash
