August 17, 2015

Mute Your Windows 10 Notifications

Filed under: Main — Tags: , — admin @ 12:01 am

To me, the notification sound in Windows 10 sounds exactly like the first chord of the Simpsons TV show. So every time the Windows 10 computer chimes a notification, I start singing, “The Simpsons . . .” It’s annoying.

Well, I’m sure both my signing and the notification chime are annoying.

Ringtone! I’m sorry: They call sounds and alerts and chimes ringtones now. I suppose some marketing dork somewhere thinks “ringtone” is sexy and so every bleep and bloop made by an electronic device is now a ringtone.

R2D2 is a walking ringtone generator.

The notifications in Windows 10 are similar to the notices in OS X. Although in OS X I immediately figured out how to turn them off. That was so long ago that I don’t know how to turn them on or even know the official name for the OS X notification slide-in thing. It’s blissfully silent, and that’s how I like it.

In Windows 10, you can mute one or all of the notifications.

To view the notifications, click the Notification doohickey on the taskbar, shown in Figure 1, or press the Win+A keyboard shortcut, where A stands for Action Center.

Figure 1. The Notifications notification notification in the notification area. Notification.

Figure 1. The Notifications notification notification in the notification area. Notification.

The Action Center, which I won’t show here because I’m lazy and the soup is almost ready, is split into two areas: The top part shows notifications. The bottom part contains tiles that turn various PC features off or on.

One of the tiles, shown in Figure 2, is the Quiet Hours tile. Click it to suppress all notifications for a spell.

Figure 2. The Quiet Hours tile.

Figure 2. The Quiet Hours tile.

When you enter Quiet Hours mode (which is what I’m calling it, so I’m free to capitalize the words), the Notification notification notification (Figure 1) changes to show a universal “Stop” icon, which I’m also not showing here because the soup is smelling damn good. No notifications pop out or play the first chord of the Simpsons theme song while this mode is active.

Click the Quiet Hours notification again to disable it.

You can specifically suppress certain types of notifications, which is a bit more effective than toggling Quiet Hours. To do so, open the Settings app and choose the System tile. Choose Notifications & Actions from the left side of the window. A list of notification toggles appears on the right side of the window, shown in Figure 3, which you can individually suppress.

Figure 3. Squelching selected notification items in the Settings app.

Figure 3. Squelching selected notification items in the Settings app.

For example, to deactivate those self-serving tips Windows generates about Windows itself, click the toggle by Show Me Tips About Windows. Off. Off. Off.

Beneath the Windows notification toggles, you find toggles for individual apps. The one that was bugging me the most was Dropbox, which lets me constantly know which files are updated, changed, or removed. Ugh. Thanks, but I don’t want to keep signing TV show theme songs every time that happens.

Also, unlike older versions of Windows you don’t need to click a Save, Apply, or OK button after clicking (or tapping) a toggle in Windows 10. Make the setting and you’re good.

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