Push notifications are undeniably important in alerting you to messages and updates. As helpful as they are, a constant stream of notifications from apps and web browsers can easily distract you from the task at hand and ultimately negatively impact your productivity. Therefore, it is becoming more and more important that we adequately manage these notifications.
Fortunately, Windows 11 offers a few settings that you can tweak to make your notification experience easier. In this article, we’ll show you how to enable, disable, and manage notifications in Windows 11 to help you take control of everything. So let’s get started.
How to Enable or Disable Notifications in Windows 11
First, let’s see how you can quickly enable or disable notifications on your Windows 11 PC using the redesigned Settings app.
Stage 1: Open the start menu and click the Settings icon to launch the Settings app. Alternatively, you can also press Windows key + I to quickly launch settings.
Step 2: In the Settings app, go to the System tab on your left and click on Notifications on your right.
Stage 3: Here you can turn off the switch next to Notifications to completely disable notifications on your Windows 11.
Similarly, you can turn the switch back on to allow apps to push notifications on your PC.
How to Manage Notifications for Specific Apps
If you have turned off all notifications in Windows 11 to avoid inconvenience, you may miss a few important reminders and emails. To make sure you always get alerts and messages from important apps, Windows 11 also lets you manage notifications on an app-by-app basis. Read on to find out how.
Stage 1: Press Windows key + I to launch the Settings app on your PC. Switch to the System tab and go to Notifications settings.
Step 2: Scroll down to ‘Notifications from apps and other senders’. Here you will find a list of apps and senders that can send you notifications. Toggle the corresponding switches next to these apps to enable or disable notifications for them.
Alternative Method
Besides the above method, you can disable notifications for certain apps from Notification Center provided you already have a notification from that app. Here’s how.
Stage 1: Open the notification center by clicking the time and date icon in the lower right corner.
Alternatively, you can also press Windows key + N to open Notification Center in Windows 11.
Step 2: Find a notification from the app you want to turn off the notification for. Click on the three-dot menu icon and select ‘Turn off all notifications for’. [AppName].’
If you’ve decided to enable notifications for a particular app, there are some additional preferences you can set in Windows 11 to make your notification experience even easier.
Enable or Disable Notification Banner
Open the Settings app and go to Notification settings. Click on the app to view additional notification settings. Now use the checkboxes to specify whether the app should show a notification banner. In addition, you can also turn off the notification sound from here.
Set Notification Priority
Even after filtering out annoying notifications from certain apps, there’s a good chance an important notification is buried deep in the notification stack. In order not to miss an important warning, you can assign different priorities to notifications by following the steps below.
Stage 1: Open notification settings and click on the app to set its priority.
Step 2: Under ‘Priority of notifications in notification center’ select from Top, High and Normal to set your preference.
Once configured, notifications from apps you’re interested in always stay on top, regardless of their time.
Bonus: try Focus Assist on Windows 11
Focus assist is a useful utility in Windows that helps you concentrate on the task by silencing irrelevant notifications. It does this by filtering notifications from specific apps and ensuring that apps and people on your priority list can always reach you.
Here’s how to set up and use Focus assist in Windows 11.
Stage 1: Click the Search icon from the Taskbar, type focus help and hit Enter.
Step 2: Here you can enable Focus Assist by selecting ‘Priority only’ or ‘Alarms only’.
Setting it to ‘Priority only’ will allow apps and people in the priority list to send notifications. You can add exceptions for such apps and contacts by customizing the priority list.
Setting it to ‘Alarms only’ will mute all notifications except Alarms.
You can also tick the checkbox below to view a summary of missed notifications at the end of your focus session.
After completing the setup, you can quickly enable Focus assist by visiting the Action Center in Windows 11.
Focus assist can be a real productivity booster at work. You can set it to activate automatically during your working hours, and at the end you can view a summary of all the notifications you missed.
take control
Once you get used to the brand new Windows 11 Settings app and the above options, you can easily control all your notifications. And if you’re familiar with Focus assist in Windows 10, it certainly won’t take long.
