Browser notifications let websites announce important updates. Websites send notifications to alert you to new emails, blog posts, or special offers. These notifications are genuinely useful in some cases like Gmail where it can notify you of a new email.

But sadly, most websites these days have "abused" this feature to the point where you get bombarded with notifications. Notifications can interrupt your browsing experience and distract your focus thus they quickly turn into an annoyance.

You can deny permission when a website requests you to send notifications. You would just have to do it for every website. So, wouldn't it be great if you could stop websites from sending you notifications altogether?

Here's how you can do just that.

How to Turn Off Google Chrome Notifications

To disable website notifications on Chrome, follow the instructions below.

  1. Click the three-dot menu button on the right and click Settings.
  2. Scroll to the bottom and click Advanced.
  3. Find and click on Content Settings.
  4. Click Notifications.
  5. Toggle Ask before sending to the left and disable it.
  6. It should now display Blocked, indicating that notifications from all the websites will be blocked by default.
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Note that the websites that you've authorized to send notifications earlier can still send you notifications. If you want to block notifications from those websites, here's how you can do it.

  1. Scroll down to the Allow section.
  2. Tap the menu button next to the website you want to disallow notifications from.
  3. Select Remove.
how to turn off notifications chrome firefox safari

The website will no longer be able to send you notifications.

Perhaps the best thing is that you can manually add an exception in the Allow section while still blocking out notifications from every other website out there. For instance, you can allow Facebook notifications, while disallowing annoying prompts from every other website.

How to Turn Off Notifications for Chrome Android/iOS

Disabling website notifications on Chrome for Android and iOS is pretty similar to that of Chrome on the desktop. Here's how.

  1. Open Chrome on your Android device or iPhone.
  2. Tap the three-dot overflow menu button and click Settings.
  3. Tap Site settings > Notifications.
  4. Toggle the Notifications switch to disable it.
how to turn off notifications chrome firefox safari

How to Turn Off Safari Notifications

Like all notifications on Mac, the website notifications also slide out from the top right corner. Safari makes it pretty easy to stop websites from sending you notifications. Here's how to block website notifications on Safari.

  1. Click Safari > Preferences from your Mac's menu bar.
  2. Click on the Websites tab.
  3. Select Notifications from the sidebar.
  4. Uncheck the box where it says Allow websites to ask for permission to send push notifications.
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Once you enable this setting, websites will no longer prompt you to send notifications.

As with Chrome, you can still explicitly Allow or Deny individual websites to send you notifications, overriding this global setting.

Note that website push notifications are not supported on mobile Safari. I'm sure that there's a technical reason behind it, but I think it's a clever decision since we already have tons of apps that bomb us with notifications on our mobile devices.

How to Turn Off Mozilla Firefox Notifications

Firefox doesn't let you disable website notifications altogether from its regular Settings window. To change this setting, you'll need to dive into Firefox's hidden about:config page.

Here's how you can do that.

  1. Type about:config in the address bar and press enter.
  2. Click on I accept the risk.
  3. Type "notifications" in the Search bar.
  4. Find and double-click on dom.webnotifications.enabled.
  5. Its preference value will now be changed to false, indicating that website notifications have been disabled.
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If you've already granted permission to a website to send you notifications, you can configure it by going to Firefox's Settings page.

  1. Go to Firefox > Preferences.
  2. Click Privacy & Security from the sidebar.
  3. Click the Settings button beside Notifications.
  4. Here, you should see the list of websites that have requested to send you notifications. You can click Allow or Deny and configure the setting for each website.
how to turn off notifications chrome firefox safari

As a Firefox user, you might also be interested in checking out different versions of Mozilla Firefox and trying something new.

How to Turn Off Opera Notifications

Opera makes it a breeze to disable websites from asking you to show notifications. Here's how to disable website notifications on Opera.

  1. Open Opera > Preferences.
  2. Click Websites from the sidebar.
  3. Scroll to the bottom and find the Notifications section.
  4. Select Do not allow any site to show desktop notifications.
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To configure notifications on a per-website basis, click on Manage Exceptions. Here, you can Allow or Deny individual websites from sending you notifications.

Note that doing so will override the global setting configured above.

How to Turn Off Microsoft Edge Notifications

Website notifications saw the light of the day on Microsoft Edge with the Windows 10 Anniversary update. Unfortunately, Edge doesn't let you disable website notification prompts altogether. However, you can still configure notifications on a per-website basis.

Here's how to configure website notifications on Edge.

  1. Click the menu icon and select Settings.
  2. Find Advanced settings > Website permissions.
  3. Here, you can configure permission for websites.

We hope that Microsoft adds an option to disable notification prompts entirely in Edge. Until then, you'll have to deal with these prompts on a per-site basis. Edge at least seems to remember your preference for the current website, though.

Say Goodbye to Annoying Website Notifications

Chrome introduced website notifications back in 2015, and most browsers followed suit. It gave web apps a native feel by letting them push notifications. It seemed like a great idea back then. For the most part, it still is, but the sheer number of websites implementing them leads to a frustrating experience.

For users who prefer Gmail's web version instead of a native client, website notifications might be a boon. But for most of the news websites, I really don't want to be notified every time you post a new update.

The information overload is real and you can easily feel overwhelmed amid such chaos. I'd prefer to block most websites from displaying notification prompts altogether.