The Accidental Swipe
On modern versions of macOS, the Notification Center and widgets panel are hidden off the right-hand side of your screen. Apple designed a trackpad gesture to quickly reveal this panel: swiping inward from the far-right edge of the trackpad with two fingers. While this gesture sounds intuitive, it is notoriously sensitive. If you are quickly scrolling through a long web page or navigating a complex spreadsheet, resting your fingers too close to the right edge of the trackpad will cause the Mac to interpret your movement as a swipe. The Notification Center will suddenly slide over your active window, obscuring your work and breaking your concentration.
How to Disable the Notification Center Swipe Gesture
To stop your Mac from automatically pulling up the Notification Center when you accidentally brush the trackpad, you must disable the specific gesture associated with it in System Settings.
1. Click the Apple logo () in the top-left corner of your Mac’s screen.
2. Select System Settings (or System Preferences on older macOS versions).
3. In the left-hand navigation sidebar, scroll all the way down and click on Trackpad.
4. At the top of the main Trackpad settings pane, click on the tab labelled More Gestures.
5. Look down the list of available gestures until you find the option labelled Notification Center.
6. You will see a drop-down menu next to it (which is likely set to “Swipe left from the right edge with two fingers”).
7. Click the drop-down menu and change the setting to Off.
The gesture is now completely disabled. You can aggressively swipe and scroll on the right edge of your trackpad without ever triggering the Notification Center accidentally.
How to Access Notifications Without the Gesture
Even with the annoying swipe gesture disabled, your notifications and widgets are still easily accessible when you actually want to see them.
To open the Notification Center manually, simply move your mouse cursor to the very top-right corner of your screen and click on the Date and Time in the Menu Bar. The panel will slide out exactly as it did before, but now only when you explicitly ask for it.