Google Chrome silences those annoying notifications

Google’s Chrome web browser is about to get a lot less noisy.

On Friday, the tech giant Announce A new feature automatically disables browser notifications for websites you haven’t interacted with recently, disabling their ability to pop up alerts and updates that you may no longer be interested in.

The feature will launch on Chrome on Android and on desktop.

This feature expands on existing functionality already available in Chrome’s Health Check feature, which Cancels Camera and location permissions from websites you no longer visit.

The company implicitly admits that browser notifications, as designed, were probably a bad idea, saying that its own data shows that users receive a large number of notifications but rarely interact with them. Google reports that less than 1% of all notifications receive any interactions from users.

However, the tech giant believes that some notifications can be useful, which is why it will not cancel them Installed web applications – Only for sites with low user interaction and a high amount of notifications sent. This change alone may prompt spammy websites that push a lot of notifications to reconsider how many alerts they want to send, so they don’t lose access completely.

Unwanted notifications have been a problem facing consumers for years. On the iPhone, for example Apple had to add controls Which allows users to send their push notifications to a daily summary, mute them, or turn them off completely from the notification message itself, after consumer Frustrations As the notification system grew.

Google says it will notify users when notification permissions are removed, allowing users to change the setting back, if they prefer. The company notes that if users prefer not to have Google interfere, they can also choose to turn off this automatic cancellation feature completely.

This feature was under testing before the official launch today. Google found that these changes did not significantly impact the total number of clicks on notifications, which is an indication that people did not interact much with these pop-ups to begin with.