The Chromebook notification tray recently got a huge visual refresh, and quite honestly, it looks beautiful. I originally predicted this with my Material You mockup for ChromeOS, and now that it’s here, it feels like another part of the OS. Overall, with the new Productivity Launcher, Google’s laptop operating system has gone from rudimentary and passable to polished and beautiful.
That’s not to say everything about the notification system is perfect, though, and if you have apps from the Google Play Store installed alongside standalone web apps, you’ll be no stranger to receiving notifications. double notifications for YouTube, Gmail, etc.
Today I’m going to show you how to handle this and ultimately how to turn off a set of pings so your board doesn’t get absolutely and unnecessarily cluttered throughout the day! As you can see below, I received a YouTube notification from one of my favorite Nintendo content creators – RGT 85 – via the YouTube Android app. Right below I have the exact same notification, except it’s from the Chrome browser. It happens all the time, but there is an easy way to stop it from happening.
Most people who have an app installed will no longer want to be notified via the browser itself of updates to the websites they use, so toggling Chrome would be ideal in this case. Last year, Google got to the point where you no longer need to enter the browser to manage website notifications (although you still can), and instead started hosting them in ChromeOS settings via the shelf.
Did you know: If you want to keep website notifications enabled and disable app notifications instead, you can simply manage them individually through each app!
You can actually see them by opening the quick settings panel in the bottom right of your screen (click on the clock!) and clicking the arrow just to the right of the settings cog to fully expand it. Next, you should see a “Notifications” section. If you click on the arrow just below to see the details of this section, you will come across a complete list of all apps and web apps installed on your Chromebook.
As you can see in the image above, you can toggle the app badge here (the notification dot that appears at the top of an app icon when you have new information to display), as well as the Do Not Disturb option. In the list, there are checkboxes to the left of each item, and toggling them will allow or prevent that specific app or PWA from showing notifications in your status bar.
In the case of YouTube, you wouldn’t want to disable the Android version (labeled “YouTube”), but rather the web app labeled by its website URL. Here it is listed as “https://www.youtube.com:443”. If you compare the first and second image, you’ll notice that web notifications are now gone from my shelf for YouTube.
If you don’t want to bother with the shelf, you can also just open the Settings app on your Chromebook and go to “Apps > Notifications” and toggle them there, but I noticed there’s no way to tell the difference between websites and apps in this section. For this reason, I prefer the method I described first, and I hope you do too!
I just want the steps!
1. Click on the clock at the bottom right of your Chromebook shelf
2. Expand Quick Settings with arrow icon
3. Click the arrow just below “Notifications” the icon or the word “Notifications” itself (not the icon!)
4. Scroll down and locate ads marked with website URLs.
5. Click the boxes next to them to disable each web application
6. Alternatively, manage them through Chrome or disable them all at once
seven. Enjoy!
