Configuring notifications in Windows 10
Starting with Windows 8, Windows shows notifications in the Action Center. Action center also contains Quick Actions.
To configure the Action Center, press the start button and search for notifications.
You can also use: Start ➾ Settings ➾ System ➾ notification & actions.
As you can see from the screenshot, this window contains global settings and application-specific settings.
Application-specific options
If all you want to do is to prevent an app from showing notifications, just click on the on/off toggle for the app. If you want more fine-grained control, click on the name of the app whose notifications you want to control.
Some applications show a notification banner when a notification arrives but does not show anything in the Action Center. Some applications do the reverse. You can configure exactly how an application shows notifications using the configure screen shown above.
tip: Notification banners are the sliding boxes which appear next to the notification icon when notifications arrive.
You can choose whether to play a sound when a notification arrives. The priority options are for controlling the position of the notification in the notifications list. It is useful if you are getting a large number of notifications and want to bring important notifications to the top or send less important notifications to the bottom.
Global options
The global options are mostly self-explanatory. The get notification from apps and other senders option determines whether non-Microsoft apps are allowed to show notifications. There are a couple of options relating to showing notification on the lock screen. You might want to turn those off if privacy is a concern.
Temporarily pausing notifications using the Quiet Hours option
The Quiet Hours option is something like a do-not-disturb mode. To enable Quiet Hours, right-click on the notification button on the taskbar and select the Turn on quiet hours option.
To disable Quite Hours right-click again on the notification button and choose the Turn off quiet hours option.
tip: Please note that in recent versions of Windows 10, Quiet Hours has been replaced by a much more powerful feature called Focus Assist. This new feature deserves an article of its own; you can read about it at Focus Assist: A do not disturb mode for Windows 10.
Changing the duration of the notifications
By default, the notifications are shown for 5 seconds. It is possible to change this duration.
tip: If your reason for wanting to change the duration of the notifications is that some app you are interested in is not showing notifications in the action center, please note that this behavior can be changed on a per-app basis using the Application-specific options discussed above.
To change the duration of notifications:-
- Click Start
- Settings
- Ease of Access
- Show notifications for
- Use the drop-down list to change notification duration