I don’t know what the deal is, but every time I use my Windows computer, I seem to get a lot of notifications popping up. How can I slow that down or get rid of them?
One of the changes in Windows 10 that takes a bit of getting used to is that there are even more notifications than in previous generations of the Windows system. Seems like just about every program on your computer is going to be popping up little windows, often even when they aren’t actually running. Which is a bit curious, to say the least. Still, most of the notifications are useful because they help you keep an eye on your system and aware of what’s going on.
You can turn off notifications, but there’s a much smarter way to deal with all of these interrupts and it’s called “Focus Assist”. The idea is that you specify times of the day when you just don’t want those goofy notifications interrupting you all the time. Of course, you can just specify midnight to 11.59pm every single day but as you’ll see, there are other ways to do this too… So let’s have a look!
To start, search for “focus assist” in the search box:
You can see what’s highlighted – that’s what you want: “Focus assist settings“. When you choose that, here’s what you’ll see:
By default, Focus Assist is turned off, so you’re getting all notifications from every program. You can step it back by choosing “Priority only” or even “Alarms only” for the least obtrusive.
Scroll down, however, and you’ll see much more interesting options, some of which are enabled:
The defaults are why you don’t see notifications pop up when you’re mirroring your display or using a project or when you’re deep in the latest game and really don’t care about virus updates at that point!
More importantly, though, notice the “During these times” option. Turn it on and you can then specify on and off times:
Pretty self-explanatory, but notice that you can set up various repeats, change focus levels and have it turn on and off invisibly or actually get, yes, a notification about focus assist turning on/off. More importantly is this checkbox:
Yes, I highly recommend you enable the summary of what you miss while focus assist is enabled, just in case. Ya know, in case there is a really important notification that the program’s miscategorized as not being a priority message. Chose that, though, and it’s Cortana that pops up to help:
You’ve got it from here. But now you know how to tame those crazy notifications and fully gain control over focus assist in your Windows 10 system. Now, use it wisely! 🙂
Pro tip: While you’re here, check out our extensive Windows 10 help area, please.