Website notifications are a plague on the modern Internet. Typically, they ask for your permission to receive automatic updates from specific websites, but many people consider them an annoyance that hinders web browsing. To alleviate this, Microsoft recently added a feature to its Edge browser that automatically silences these notifications. The only problem? It was confusing for the few users who wanted to interact with them.
Now, Microsoft says it is taking a new approach: with the latest release of Edge 88, it’s crowdsourcing data about how users handle these pop-ups. The company will track the options that people choose – allow, block, ignore or dismiss notifications altogether – and compile that information into an annoyance score. If the number is too high, Edge will automatically silence notifications from that site. Microsoft says it will continue to adjust this feature during the trial period and will also receive user feedback.
“We will use regularly updated data so that sites can provide complete warning to their users when they get better acceptance rates from their users,” wrote the Edge team in a blog. “This should be a strong motivator for sites to follow best practices and request notifications when they think users are most likely to accept. The site should provide a complete prompt with an enhanced user experience.”
If you are stingy like me and just want all sites to be stopped, you can also enable the “Silent notification requests” option in Edge settings. Microsoft has also added some other notification settings recently: Edge can send push notifications even when it is closed (starting with version 85). The browser can now also automatically dismiss Windows 10 full-screen notifications without requiring you to do anything.