I really like the new Notifications feature in Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, except for when I’m projecting my screen at a meeting. Not so good. How can I disable or “mute” Notifications in that situation?
If you’ve been running an incredibly useful utility called Growl on your Mac in previous versions of Mac OS X, you’ve already had much of the benefit of Notifications, just not built deep into the OS. With the introduction of OS 10.9 “Mavericks”, the Notifications system has become an integral feature and pops up all sorts of useful information far beyond just tracking what messages are showing up in your mailbox.
In fact, there are some Web sites that are starting to work directly with Notifications, giving you direct updates on what’s happening there. I’m expecting a lot more sites will offer this service. It’s a natural for news sites like BBC and CNN, of course.
Turns out that there’s a lot you can do in terms of settings and customization, but let’s start with the menu bar.
Here’s what the top right of your screen should look like:
The three horizontal bars on the right? That’s the Notifications icon.
Click on it and this slides in from the right:
You can see that my main notifications here are from “MailTab Pro for Gmail”, a little app that adds Gmail notifications to my list.
Now click and drag downward within the Notifications area and lo and behold, look what shows up:
I’ve added the handy red box to highlight the “Do Not Disturb” feature.
Want to turn off Notifications? Just click “OFF”.
Done. Now you’ve turned off Notifications.
But there’s more to it than that. Look at the very bottom of the window for the gear icon:
Click on it and you’ll go to “System Preferences” -> “Notifications”, which looks like this:
As you can see, there’s lots of control. More importantly, notice the second check box line: “When mirroring to TVs and projectors”. Check that and your Mac should automatically turn off Notifications when you’re plugged in to a projector. Easy.