Notifications and web pop-ups on your desktop or phone can be annoying and disruptive. Like cell phones, Windows 11 relies heavily on push notifications from first-party or third-party apps and websites. Almost every application on Windows 11 tries to send notifications, often unhelpfully.
For example, the Windows Security app sends periodic alerts after a security check is performed on your device. Likewise, notifications sent through the Weather app, websites subscribed to through Microsoft Edge or Chrome, and other apps are an undeniable problem in Windows 11.
Microsoft has made some changes to Windows to reduce the number of alerts people receive on a daily basis. For example, Windows 11 comes with “Focus Assist,” which lets you focus on specific tasks by reducing distractions, including notifications from apps like Outlook and Edge.
Now, the tech giant is trying a different approach to reducing notification spam, with a new feature called “Smart Opt-Out” that will reduce spam notifications in the OS, according to a reference in the Windows 11 preview.
Interestingly, the feature itself is a notification that will suggest disabling notifications for applications that users don’t come into contact with often. For example, if you haven’t interacted with Outlook notifications for a month, you will receive a notification titled “Turn off Outlook notifications?” notification, which will offer two options: turn it off and leave it unchanged.
This change is expected to have a positive impact on the user experience for most Windows 11 users, as too many notifications can be distracting. Email filters have been utilizing a similar approach for years, making it a logical step for Windows 11 to detect ignored notifications and suggest that they be automatically disabled.
The Smart Opt-Out feature should not affect notifications from applications that you interact with a certain feature on a daily or weekly basis.
Since Smart Opt-Out is a minor new addition to the operating system, it should arrive in the stable release channel in a few months via a new configuration update for Windows 11.
Another notification-related improvement in Windows 11 involves giving users more control over high-priority notifications from first-party and third-party applications. These urgent or important notifications can bypass the Focus Assist (Do Not Disturb) setting.
For example, applications can send notifications called “Allow important notifications” that allow users to allow high-priority notifications from specific applications (such as Visualizer) even when Do Not Disturb mode is enabled.
Microsoft is improving it’s emergency notifications feature by adding a new control called “View Notifications” to allow users to view the content of notifications while using full-screen applications for privacy.
