How to disable Web Push Notifications

Website push notifications were developed to contact the users quicker, than for example email, and inform with the live updates on some games or shows, news, sales, emergencies or updates from your subscriptions and etc. However, this beautiful idea soon earned a shady reputation for these pop-up alerts, because websites began misusing them to advertise, contact customers intrusively and multiple times with no relevant content for the traffic, furthermore hackers programmed some pop-ups to spread malware, like   Olpair.com,   Confirmprize.com,   Invictioner.club,   Topgetfree.com.  

Although not all push notifications are bad, we understand how frustrating it can be having to deal with endless pop-ups when all you want is to access a website, therefore 2-viruses.com team prepared this guide on how to disable web push notifications all at once or just on certain pages, that have been interrupting your online surfing experience. Below you will find the detailed instructions for each browser separately, which you should follow accordingly, so let’s get into it.

Why and when to blocking Push notifications

Before we begin, it is imperative to figure out the reason why have you come to this point where you want to disable all push notifications. Even though the settings can be changed back at any time, you might be missing a dangerous malware infection in your PC, that may be responsible for all the irritating pop-up messages, which will not go anywhere if you try to block it, or will get temporarily concealed, while still harming the PC, for example, Tuniaf.com pop-up virus.

Typical website based push notifications appear even on legitimate sites like Youtube, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, various News pages, Weather forecast sites and etc. There these messages serve as a convenient tool to connect with its readers/visitors in a quick manner, displaying the latest articles, discounts, forecasts, receipts, updates, reminders and etc. Since they usually are not harmful and you happen to find them useful, but hate dealing with other sites’ alerts, then the best option for you is to add these preferred sites as an exceptions, while at the same time blocking all other push notifications. If you are the one who doesn’t get bothered by the pop-ups, except for some site where you want to focus mainly on reading or writing, you can block just one web page, again, as an exception.

However, if you keep seeing the pop-up browser alerts all the time, from the same site or URL that is not familiar, persistently trying to get your attention, be aware that it is a big indication that there is an adware, PUP virus installed in your system or browser as a malicious extension, which is causing such messages and you need to remove it rather than just blocking it. To do so you will need to get a Spyhunter/Malwarebytes and run a full system scan for detection.

How to disable notifications on Google Chrome

Google Chrome is set to always alert the user on all its versions about the website that want to show notifications, but since it is the most popular browser, according to the W3schools.com statistics, correspondingly you will see considerably more notifications when browsing, meaning a bigger potential to end up with a pop-up virus and cram your online navigator with excessive ads, malicious javascript. Disabling all alerts, with a few websites as an exception is the best decision. Interestingly, if you are browsing in Incognito mode, then you won’t be seeing any notifications.

The easiest way to get to the point is by simply pasting chrome://settings/content/notifications into Chrome’s URL address bar and hitting enter, then following step 5 to make modifications. But you can follow the step-by-step guide as well.

1. Open Chrome, click on the ‘ ⋮ ‘ More button at the very top right, and select Settings.
   
   
2. Once in Settings, scroll down until you see Privacy and security, then click on Site settings.
   
   
3. Find Notifications and click on it.
   
4. Adjust your Chrome’s push notification settings by clicking on Blocked or Add buttons.
   

To stop pop-up messages from a specific site, find its address in the Allow list (below the Block list), press the ‘ ⋮ ‘ More button next to it, and select Block.

You can click the top right switch Sites can ask to send notifications to disable all the alerts. This, of course, is the safest option, and if you still want to see some notifications from certain websites, you can add them manually as the exceptions by clicking on the Add button to the side of the Allow section.

Consider clicking on the Use quieter messaging switch to make notification requests less intrusive.

How to disable notifications on Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla is the second most used web browser that also allows its users to opt-in or opt-out from seeing website push notifications. Although it is much easier and faster to access the permission page than Chrome, Mozilla uses a slightly different approach.

1. In Firefox, click on the right Menu button and select Preferences.
   
2. On the left side, click the Privacy & Security section. Scroll down to Permissions. Next to Notifications click on Settings.
   
3. In Notification Permissions change a website’s Status from Allow to Block.
   

Unlike Chrome, Firefox uses quiet notifications by default. But you cannot disable a site’s notifications if you have not allowed them yet and must select to block all the new requests for every site.

If you have allowed notifications that you wish to stop seeing, you should be able to stop them by finding the site’s entry in the Notification Permissions box, clicking the Allow label to the right of the site’s name, and switching it to Block. Save the changes.

Alternatively, there is another method to try, if this did not work.

1. Type about:config into the URL bar, click the Accept the risk and continue button. (This warning is there for a reason, so be very careful from now on.)
2. Enter in the search bar webnotifications and select dom.webnotifications.serviceworker.enabled. Then double-click it so that the value flips from ‘true’ to ‘false’.

This will disable push notifications, but Mozilla will still be able to post desktop alerts for you. To block all of the notifications do the same but instead, change the value of dom.webnotifications.enabled.

How to disable notifications on Safari

For Mac and Safari users, notification disabling will be one of the easiest and quickest. No matter, that Mac computers are not as prone to infections as Windows, and getting compromised from the infected browser notification is much less common, it is still an applaudable practice to control how websites can communicate with you.

1. Open Safari and click on Preferences. Can use an alternative keyboard combination ‘Command’ + ‘,’ .
   
2. Then click on Websites at the top bar, then click the bottom left Notifications section. Uncheck the ‘Allow websites to ask for permission to send notifications’ box.
   

How to disable notifications on Opera

Opera is another easy-to-configure browser, which will take only seconds to adjust.

1. Click on the gear icon in the bottom left to open Settings. Then, in the left column, click on Advanced, Privacy & security. Then, click on Site settings.
   
2. Scroll down to Notifications and click it. Press the Sites can ask to send notifications switch to block all notifications. Or manage individual sites below. 

Opera is based on Chromium, which means that it works similarly to Google Chrome.

How to disable notifications on MS Edge

There are two versions of Microsoft Edge, with the new one having come out in 2020. They have different icons, with the old Edge using a stylized ‘E’ while the new Edge uses a stylized wave.

Unfortunately, the old Microsoft Edge does not have the function to disable web push notifications, despite all the new updates, and being considered one of the Safest World Wide Web browsers. But it doesn’t just allow any website to inject scripts and show you anything they want, Edge simply asks each time if you want to allow this page to show you alerts or no. Of course, there are certain browser add-ons like ad-blocks and etc, which might be more helpful if you have had enough with the irritating browser pop-ups, but be careful because sometimes these enhancers can cause more harm than benefit.

However, the new Edge does allow you to disable web push notifications. The fastest way to reach the needed screen is by typing or pasting edge://settings/content/notifications into Edge’s URL bar. Or you can go step-by-step as outlined below:

1. Open Edge and open its main menu by clicking the three-dot button at the top right. Press Settings.
   
2. In settings, press the three lines at the top left corner. Choose Cookies and Site Permissions. Scroll down and click on Notifications.
   
3. 4. Here, change notification permissions for individual sites or click the switch to block all notifications automatically.
   

You can change notification permissions for individual websites: the three-dot menu next to each of them gives you the options to Block/Allow, Edit, or Remove the permission.

Blocking makes it so that the site can’t send more notifications or ask for permission to. Removing makes it as if you’d never clicked the Allow button, but lets the site ask to again.

You can also click the Add buttons to include websites to the Block and Allow lists. The settings save automatically and you don’t need to restart the browser.