The Chrome web browser from Google is about to get a lot quieter. It will now have a feature that turns off notifications for websites you haven’t visited in a while. This update stops these sites from sending you alerts and updates that you might not want anymore, which is a direct response to the modern problem of notification fatigue.
The feature will be available for Chrome on both Android and desktop computers, giving users a single solution across all devices.
This new feature adds a lot to what Chrome’s Safety Check tool could do before, which was mainly to take away camera and location permissions from websites you don’t visit anymore. The company now seems to agree that the way browser notifications were first planned might not have been a good idea.
This admission is backed up by its own data, which shows that users get a lot of notifications but don’t often interact with them. In fact, less than 1% of all notifications get any responses from users, which shows a clear disconnect.
The system uses engagement signals to work, like whether you’ve recently visited or interacted with a site. If Chrome sees that a site hasn’t been active for a long time and is sending a lot of notifications, it will automatically take away the permission.
Google thinks that some notifications can be useful. That’s why this change won’t affect notifications from installed web apps. These notifications are more like app notifications and show that the user really wants to do something. The goal is to let useful alerts through while getting rid of old subscriptions that build up over time.
This automatic cleanup promises a cleaner, more focused browsing experience for users, with fewer interruptions that aren’t needed. Google lets you stay in charge. The browser will let you know when it takes away notification permissions, so you can change the setting back if you want to.
You can turn notifications back on right from the prompt that Chrome shows, go back to the website, or change permissions in the Safety Check menu in Settings. You can also turn off this feature completely if you don’t want Google to get involved at all.
This is part of a bigger trend in the industry where big platforms are moving toward quieter, more intentional permissions. Before the feature went live, Google tested it and found that these changes made a big difference in how many notifications people got without changing the total number of clicks on notifications very much.
This shows that people weren’t really interacting with these pop-ups in the first place. This change should make spammy websites think twice about how many alerts they send out, making sure that they have to earn attention instead of expecting it.
