As with video chat, screen sharing is now a necessary tool for anyone working or socializing at home. Unfortunately, sharing your device’s screen can be a privacy risk – or just embarrassing – if you don’t take precautions against accidents share too much. To help mitigate that risk, Google is testing a new feature that silences Chrome notifications while you share a Chrome window so that your browser cannot wash your laundry without warning.
While Google Meet automatically silences Chrome notifications, the new Chrome feature works with screen sharing apps like Messenger, Discord, Microsoft Teams and Zoom on both desktop and mobile. Turning it on prevents Chrome from sharing notification details with your audience and can help keep your presentations professional and distracted.
Instead of turning off notifications at all times, it just silences them while you share the screen – they are not ignored or dismissed. When you’re done sharing, you’ll be able to see everything you’ve lost in Gmail, Drive, and any third-party sites that send notifications through Chrome.
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Eventually, notification silencing will be available for all Google accounts – including general users, Google Workspace and corporate G Suite users – through the Chrome stable channel, but you can try an initial version of Chrome Canary right now. Chrome Canary is used to test unfinished features and configurations, therefore, it is subject to stability errors and crashes, but you will have to use this version if you want to silence Chrome notifications during your presentations. Here’s how to experiment:
- Download Chrome Canary to your device.
- Open your browser and go to chrome: // flags / # mute-notifications-during-screen-share.
- Select “Enable” in the drop-down menu.
- Restart Chrome Canary to apply the changes.
With the setting enabled, Chrome will hide all details of notifications received during screen sharing. The notification still appears on the screen with the Chrome icon, but it will simply say “the content is hidden when sharing your screen”. Select “Close” to hide the pop-up. There is also an option for “Show all” if you want to allow all notification information to be displayed. Otherwise, the hidden information is only visible after you stop screen sharing.
If you don’t want to download Chrome Canary, but still need a way to mute notifications – or if you never want to see any Chrome alerts – you can disable them in Chrome settings by visiting Settings> Privacy and security> Site settings> Permissions> Notifications.
[Android Police]