Google Chrome Update Disables Annoying Alerts

The noise level of Google’s Chrome web browser is going to drop seriously. For desktop and Android users, Google is launching a new feature in the Chrome browser that automatically disables notifications for websites you are already ignoring. Similar functionality for camera access and location tracking permissions is already available in Chrome’s Safety Check feature.

The tech giant revealed a new function on Friday that would automatically turn off browser notifications for websites you haven’t used recently. This will prevent those websites from displaying updates and alerts that you might no longer find relevant.

Both desktop and Android Chrome will support the feature at launch. Chrome users may easily unsubscribe from website alerts they don’t care about with just one press thanks to a similar Android functionality that is built upon by this new auto-revocation feature. Permissions will only be blocked for websites that send a lot of alerts but that users seldom ever visit, and the function doesn’t stop notifications for any web apps that are installed on the device.

Chrome’s Safety Check feature, which removes camera and location access from websites you no longer visit, gives you more functionality than this feature alone. 

With its own data demonstrating that users receive a large number of notifications but hardly ever interact with them, the business implicitly acknowledges that browser notifications as intended may have been a bad idea. Google observes that less than 1 percent of all notifications result in any user interaction.

Nevertheless, the tech giant will not remove notifications for installed web apps because it thinks that some notifications might be useful. Instead, it will only do so for websites with high notification volume and little user engagement. By itself, this modification may force spam websites that send out a lot of notifications to re-evaluate how many alerts they wish to send in order to avoid being completely blocked.

This feature has already been tested seeing that its users have struggled with unwanted notifications for many years. When customer dissatisfaction with the notification system on the iPhone increased, for example, Apple was compelled to include features that allow users to mute, turn off, or send their push alerts to a daily summary directly from the notification message.

With only a slight change in the overall number of notification clicks, our test results demonstrate a considerable reduction in notification overload,” Google stated in its announcement. Furthermore, our tests show that websites that send less notifications are actually receiving more clicks.

Google claims to let users know when it is deleting their notification rights so they can adjust the settings if they so choose. Users can also choose to completely off this auto-revocation option if they would rather that Google not step in, the company says. The confirmation from Google regarding the launch date of this feature has been requested for.

Prior to its official launch this week, its features has been put through testing. Indicating that users weren’t actually interacting with these pop-ups in the first place, Google discovered that these modifications had no discernible effect on the overall amount of clicks on alerts.