With Chrome 80, Google is making website notifications STFU

When Mozilla released Firefox 72 yesterday, users were happy to find that the company had tamed the popup messages that ask whether a website should be allowed to send notifications. Now, with Chrome 80, Google has done the same.

Google notes that while the option to receive notifications from sites can be useful, they are "also a common complaint as many websites request the notification permission on first visit rather than at contextually relevant moments in the user's journey". But rejoice, for there is a solution!

See also:

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• Google slaps blocks on some Linux web browsers

Google says that "under certain conditions" Chrome 80 will use "a new, quieter notification permission UI". The company says that this will help to reduce "the interruptiveness of notification permission requests", and hopefully provide a better user experience.

Writing about the changes, Google says:

Immediately after the Chrome 80 release, users will be able to opt-in to the new UI manually in Settings. In addition, the quieter UI will be automatically enabled for users under two conditions.  First, for users who typically block notification permission requests and second, on sites with very low opt in rates. The automated enrollment will be enabled gradually after the release while we gather user and developer feedback.

On both the desktop and mobile versions of the browser, users will instead see an unobtrusive icon which they can choose to interact with, or just ignore. Google also says that "sites with very low acceptance rates will be automatically enrolled in quieter prompts. They will be automatically unenrolled once the user experience is improved".

Image credit: Ilya Sergeevych / Shutterstock