Today I saw my first Chrome Notifications. I was contacted by a user who was complaining about ads showing up on his laptop. He sent me some screenshots but the ads were gone when I first looked at his laptop. I assumed it was some kind of malware or adware so I did the normal steps of checking for randomly installed programs and browsers extensions. Running processes looked normal when I checked. I also ran Malwarebytes and Cisco FireAMP but everything came back clean.
I was not sure what to do and he said the popups were kind of random. So I told him to call me when they came back up.
Ones I got to see the popups for myself I realized they were coming from something called Chrome Notifications. Some random site was added to his notifications so he was getting messages about new post on that site.
I never allow notifications so I had never really seen them before but they look annoying. So here is how to turn them off.
Turn off notifications in Chrome for a single site
Click the button beside the URL and then click “Site settings”.
Then find the notifications dropdown and set it to “Block”.
Now no more notifications should come from that site.
Disable All Chrome notifications
First click the 3 dots on the top right to open the menu then click settings.
Scroll down to the bottom of this page and click “Advanced” to show the advanced settings.
Under “Privacy and Security” there should be an option called “Content Settings” Click that.
On this page you click “Notifications” And you are given fine tooth control over who can send notifications and you can also turn all notifications off.
Turn off notifications in Firefox for a single site
Firefox also has desktop notifications so I decided to look into them as well. This is what they look like.
They are even easier to turn off then the Chrome notifications. Simply click the button beside the URL then click the X to disable them.
Disable All Firefox Notifications
Click the 3 line icon on the top right then click the “Options” button.
Now click “Privacy & Security” and look for Notification settings under Permissions.
Now you can remove whatever sites you want and block all new request.
That should take care of any desktop notifications you want to adjust in Firefox.
In Closing
These notifications seem kind of annoying to me but I do think they could have a place. Maybe with some web app that you use all the time. But at least now you know how to turn off and manage the browser desktop notifications.
