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About this lesson

Manage how notifications are delivered in Windows 11.

Quick reference

Manage Notifications

Know where to go to customize notifications and manage the settings. 

When to use

We customize our notifications so that we only receive the alerts we are most interested in and don't have unnecessary pop-ups on the screen. 

Instructions

Notifications are pop-up alerts on our screen which give us information. For example, when we receive an email, we are notified either by an alert icon or a banner. We can customize alerts to determine which type of action we receive notifications for and how that notification is presented to us. 

Notification Settings

We can set up our notifications in Settings. 

  • Go to Settings. 
  • Click System. 
  • Click Notifications. 

We can universally turn notifications off or on using the toggle slider. If we don't want to receive any notifications at all, we would toggle notifications off. 

  • Toggle Notifications On. 

We can choose if we want to display notifications on the lock screen and if we want a sound to play when an alert comes in. 

When we toggle notifications on, we toggle on notifications for all apps that send alerts. We may not want to receive notifications from every app. 

  • Scroll down to the Apps List. 
  • Toggle off notifications where necessary. 

App Notification Settings

We can customize our notification settings for each app individually. For example, we might want to customize the type of alert we get when we receive a new message in the Mail app. 

  • Go to Settings. 
  • Click System. 
  • Click Notifications. 
  • Click on Mail. 

From here we can choose if we want to receive a notification banner or if we just want to see the alert in the notification center. A banner is a small, rectangle overlay that appears in the corner of the screen when a new mail arrives. If we deselect this option, we will only receive an alert in the notification center. 

Go through each app and customize the settings. 

The Notification Center

The notification center keeps a running log of all notifications received. We can find it above the Quick Settings area. 

  • In the taskbar, click the three icons next to the date and time. 
  • The notification center is above the Quick Settings area.
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  • 00:03 Notifications are pop up alerts that appear on our screen,
  • 00:08 whenever an action has occurred.
  • 00:10 And that action might be something like we've received a new email.
  • 00:15 Notifications can come in in the form of a banner, or
  • 00:18 they might be confined to the Notification Center.
  • 00:22 Now if you're wondering where your Notification Center is.
  • 00:25 You can actually access it by clicking on the date and
  • 00:28 time in the bottom right hand corner of your PC.
  • 00:32 So let's do that, let's click to open this up, and
  • 00:35 not only do I see my calendar view, I can also see a Notifications area at the top.
  • 00:40 And you can see that I've just received an email from Jennifer Green,
  • 00:44 that relates to an enquiry.
  • 00:46 If I scroll down,
  • 00:48 I can see the notification before that was from the Microsoft Store.
  • 00:52 And it's telling me that I've just installed the photos add on.
  • 00:55 So that was the download that happened automatically when we were looking,
  • 01:00 to update our installed apps.
  • 01:02 So all of your notifications will come into this window.
  • 01:05 We can view more by clicking on the plus at the bottom, or
  • 01:08 we can clear out the entire notification list by clicking Clear All.
  • 01:12 Now if we click the three dots in the Notifications panel, that's going to allow
  • 01:17 us to go into the area where we can customize our notifications.
  • 01:21 And this is just really another area within settings.
  • 01:24 Now I can do a couple of other things in here I can Turn off all notifications for
  • 01:29 Mail, directly from within here.
  • 01:32 So if I don't want to be notified at all when a new email comes in,
  • 01:36 I can quickly toggle that setting off, or I can make this mail high priority.
  • 01:41 Now I don't want to do either of those things but
  • 01:44 I do want to take a look at my notification settings.
  • 01:46 And it is really important that you jump into here and just review how you have
  • 01:50 your notifications set up so that they work for you.
  • 01:53 In this day and age,
  • 01:54 most of us are receiving notifications all the time we have, emails coming in.
  • 01:59 We have, chat conversations taking place in teams,
  • 02:01 we have people mentioning our name in various different applications.
  • 02:05 All of those things have the potential, to send us notifications.
  • 02:10 So we can spend all day, having lots of different popups coming up on our screen.
  • 02:16 Now we might want to refine the notifications that we receive.
  • 02:20 For example I might only really care about notifications from the Mail app.
  • 02:25 Or maybe I'm only interested, when I receive a mention in Teams.
  • 02:29 So we need to make sure that we do customize our notifications.
  • 02:33 So that we strike a nice balance between lots and lots of pop ups, and
  • 02:37 nothing at all.
  • 02:38 Now if you do want to disable all notifications,
  • 02:41 you can simply toggle off this slide out.
  • 02:43 Which is going to stop all notifications coming through to your PC.
  • 02:46 Now when I say that I don't mean that you're not going to receive email anymore.
  • 02:50 I just mean that you're not going to get a little pop up in the corner of your
  • 02:54 screen, and it's not going to appear in the Notification Center.
  • 02:57 So let's toggle our notifications back on,
  • 03:00 because we can then choose how we want to be notified.
  • 03:04 So I can choose to show notification banners.
  • 03:07 So that's if I want a small window in the bottom right hand corner of my
  • 03:11 screen letting me know, when I receive something new.
  • 03:15 Alternatively I can choose to show notifications in the Notification Center.
  • 03:19 And if I have both of these toggled on as I do here, I'm going to receive a banner
  • 03:24 in the corner, and it's going to appear in the Notification Center.
  • 03:28 You may I want one or the other, or you might want both.
  • 03:31 I can also specify if I want to hear a sound when a new notification arrives so
  • 03:36 maybe I want a nice bing sound, so that it alerts me.
  • 03:39 I can choose to toggle this option off and on as well.
  • 03:43 And I can even specify the priority of notifications in the Notification Center.
  • 03:47 So I currently have mine set to normal,
  • 03:49 which means my notifications are going to show in the order that they come in.
  • 03:53 Except if the notification has been marked as high priority,
  • 03:57 which will then go to the top of the list.
  • 04:00 Now one thing that's really important, and I deliberately didn't mention this because
  • 04:04 this is something that does confuse people.
  • 04:07 Because of the way we came to this notifications pane, i.e,
  • 04:11 we went through the Notification Center.
  • 04:13 And we clicked on the three dots next to the email,
  • 04:16 I'm now just modifying my settings for mail specifically.
  • 04:20 If you take a look at the breadcrumb trail it says Notifications and Mail.
  • 04:25 So this isn't going to affect any other notifications,
  • 04:28 aside from the ones that come in from my email account.
  • 04:32 So if we go back a level to Notifications,
  • 04:35 this is where we can adjust each individual application if we want to.
  • 04:40 So mail is the one that we were currently looking at, but
  • 04:43 we can receive notifications from lots of different other applications too.
  • 04:48 For example the Microsoft Store,
  • 04:50 notice that each of these applications have a quick slider button.
  • 04:54 So if I don't want to receive any alerts from the Microsoft Store,
  • 04:58 I can simply toggle all notifications Off.
  • 05:00 What about calendar do I want to receive notifications when I'm let's say invited
  • 05:05 to a meeting?
  • 05:06 Well yes I do, but I can then click on this and
  • 05:09 customize how I want those to appear.
  • 05:11 So maybe this time I don't want a banner pop up,
  • 05:15 I just want it to be in the Notification Center.
  • 05:18 And maybe I don't want to play a sound, when that notification arrives.
  • 05:22 So it's definitely worth going through all of your apps in this Notifications area.
  • 05:27 And setting up so you only receive the alerts that are most important to you.

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