Life without notifications would be a constant struggle of always trying to determine whether an app has something new to offer or not. However, that does not mean notifications are perfect. Notifications are completely neutral as a system will send them at all times, regardless of what you are doing on your computer and what time it is. Nowadays, there are quite a few ways to control notifications in every single one of our devices and the Mac is no exception.
Disabling notifications in OS X
OS X users do not need to install any app in order to control notifications as Apple has integrated the appropriate settings in the system.
- Click on the Apple logo and open System Preferences.
- Select the “Notifications” item from the list.
- Click on the “Do Not Disturb” item from the left sidebar.
As you can see, there are multiple options you can configure here. You can block notifications during specific hours, whenever your display is sleeping and while you are mirroring your display to an external device. In case you want notifications to be silenced forever, set the “From” field a single minute after what you have entered in the “To” field. For instance, you can enter “01:01” and “01:00” in the “From” and “To” fields respectively as this ensures your Mac will not automatically disable the “Do Not Disturb” mode.
Furthermore, you can choose to allow calls from anyone or just repeated callers from the two check boxes at the bottom. This ensures that you still get important calls but you will not be disturbed by less important notifications.
Notifications will not be completely blocked, of course. You can manually check them out by going to the notifications panel so you can get up to speed with what has been happening in your Mac while notifications were being silenced.
