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Whether you’re busy with work or binge-watching a TV show, getting notifications every few minutes can be frustrating. Fortunately, it’s easy to silence incoming notifications on your Mac. You can either disable alerts entirely or silence notifications from websites.
Disable Notifications for Specific Apps via Settings
You may notice you’re receiving too many notifications from one specific app. In such situations, the best thing to do is disable notifications for that app. To do so, follow these steps:
Temporarily Mute App-Specific Notifications
If you want to stop receiving notifications from a certain app for only a specific period, macOS lets you do that as well. Here’s what you need to do:
Silence iMessage Conversations on Your Mac
If you keep getting pings from one of your friends while you’re busy with work, you can alsosilence notifications from them directly in the Messages app like you can on an iPhone.
To do so, open theMessagesapp and select the conversation with the person you’d like to mute. Click theInfo (i)button in the top-right corner of the screen and check the box next toHide Alerts.
Alternatively, you canControl-click on the conversation thread you want to silence and selectHide Alertsfrom the menu.
If you’d like to stop receiving notifications from the Messages app entirely, head toSystem Settings > Notifications > Messagesand toggle off the switch next toAllow notifications.
Silence Notifications for Websites on a Mac
While you’re able to disable browser notifications entirely by heading toSystem Settings > Notifications > [Your Browser]and toggling off the switch next toAllow notifications, what if you’d like to stop receiving notifications from one particular website? In this case, you will need to head to your browser’s settings.
Here’s how to disable notifications for a specific website in Safari:
Google Chrome
Here’s how to stop receiving notifications from a website on Google Chrome:
Mozilla Firefox
Here’s how to stop receiving notifications from a website on Mozilla Firefox:
Silence Mac Notifications With a Focus Mode
One of the best ways tominimize distractions on your Mac is by using a Focus mode. Here’s how to create one:
Similarly, you can also choose to stop receiving notifications from specific apps. ClickAllowed Appsunder theAllow Notificationssection, setSilence Some Appsfor the option next toNotifications, click theplus (+)icon below, and select all the apps you’d like to silence.
Do you have a designated time to focus on tasks? Or, do you focus better when you’re at a particular location, like a café or library? If so, we recommend scheduling your Focus mode to turn on automatically, depending on the time or your location.
To do so, select the Focus mode you just created and clickAdd ScheduleunderSet a Schedule.
If you’d like your Focus mode to turn on at a designated time, selectTimeon the next screen and enter the time you’d like the Focus mode to turn on and off.
If you’d like your Focus mode to turn on when you’re at a specific location, selectLocationinstead and enter your desired location in the search bar on the next screen.
However, if you’d much rather manually enable and disable your Focus mode when you need to focus, click theControl Centericon in the menu bar, selectFocus, and choose the Focus mode you want to enable.
One of the key benefits of using this feature is that you cansync Focus across all your Apple deviceswhen logged into the same Apple ID. This means that if you turn on a Focus mode on your Mac that silences incoming notifications from a specific person, you won’t receive notifications from that person on your iPhone as well.
Unlike iPhones, Macs do not have a dedicated mute switch orAction button that you can use to silence alertsimmediately. Fortunately, disabling notifications on your Mac only takes a few seconds. If you’d rather silence notifications for a set period instead of disabling them entirely, creating a Focus mode is your best bet!
