If you’re getting spam with notifications from your Chrome browser and just want them to go away, the good news is that you can easily turn them off. The even better news is that you can prevent them from appearing in the first place. You have full control over which sites can and cannot send you notifications.

So why do you receive these unwanted notifications, even when you are not on the offending site? At some point, the website (or websites) asked if you wanted pop-up notifications and you pressed the “Allow” button.

Fortunately, it’s easy to choose which sites can send you notifications and to turn off notifications if you no longer want to receive them.

How to Disable Chrome Notifications

Once you’ve allowed a website to send you notifications, you’ll need to manually disable them in Chrome.

1. Click on the triple dots in the upper right corner of your Chrome browser to open the menu.
2. Select “Settings”.
3. Select “Privacy and security”.
4. Select “Site Settings”.
5. Select “Notifications”.
6. In “Custom behaviors”, find the offending site in the “Allow to send notifications” list and select the triple dots to the right of the URL.
7. Select “Remove” from the pop-up menu to disable notifications for this site (although you can opt-in again in the future) or choose “Block” to remove notifications and prevent opt-in pop-ups from appearing at new to this site.

Sites that have been blocked will now appear in the “Not allowed to send notifications” section.

How to stop sites from asking you if you want to receive notifications

If you find it annoying that sites constantly ask you if you want to receive notifications, you can also prevent these little pop-ups from appearing.

1. Click on the three dots in the upper right corner to open the same Chrome browser menu as above.
2. Select “Settings”.
3. Select “Privacy and security”.
4. Select “Site Settings”.
5. Select “Notifications”.
6. Select “Do not allow sites to send notifications”.

Chrome also has a notification setting called “Use quieter messaging”. It blocks popups from appearing and instead tells you that a site wants to send you notifications in the URL bar. You’ll briefly see the words “Notifications Blocked” in the URL bar with a crossed-out bell.

The bell icon remains and you can click it to allow notifications for the site.

Along with quieter messaging, Google says it will also automatically block notification requests from sites “if other users generally don’t allow notifications from a site.”

1. Click on the triple dots in the upper right corner to open the menu.
2. Select “Settings”.
3. Select “Privacy and security”.
4. Select “Site Settings”.
5. Select “Notifications”.
6. Select “Use quieter messaging”.

Want to further streamline your Google Chrome browsing? Check out our 12 tips for faster browsing with Google Chrome.

[Image credit: Screenshots via Techlicious, laptop on couch via Smartmockups]

For the past 20+ years, Techlicious founder Suzanne Kantra has explored and written about the world’s most exciting and important science and technology issues. Prior to Techlicious, Suzanne was Technology Editor for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and Technology Editor for Popular Science. Suzanne has been featured on CNN, CBS and NBC.