The Most Annoying Feature on the Web
Modern web browsers support “Push Notifications,” allowing websites to send you alerts even when you aren’t actively looking at their page. While this is theoretically useful for a web-based email client or a calendar app, the feature has been completely hijacked by marketing teams. Today, almost every single news site, recipe blog, and e-commerce store you visit will instantly throw a pop-up in your face demanding: “[Website] wants to Show notifications: Allow or Block.” If you are tired of swatting away these irritating dialogue boxes every time you click a link, you can instruct Google Chrome to automatically deny all requests globally.
How to Block Notification Prompts in Chrome
You can change the default behavior of the browser in the site settings menu.
- Open the Google Chrome desktop browser.
- Click the three vertical dots (⋮) in the top right corner of the window.
- Select Settings from the dropdown menu.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on Privacy and security.
- In the main window, click on Site settings.
- Scroll down to the “Permissions” section and click on Notifications.
Choosing the “Quiet” Option
Under the “Default behavior” section, you will see three options.
- Select the radio button next to Don’t allow sites to send notifications.
The change is immediate. You will never see a notification pop-up again. Chrome will automatically and silently deny the request the millisecond a website attempts to ask for permission, ensuring your browsing experience remains entirely uninterrupted.
Note: If you have a few specific sites (like Gmail or Slack) that you actually want notifications from, you can scroll down to the “Allowed to send notifications” section on that same page and manually click the “Add” button to whitelist those specific URLs.