How to customize notification settings on Windows 11

Customizing general notification settings

Let’s start with the basics of notification settings. First, if you want to set up notifications on Windows 11, there are two ways to do it. The quickest way is to right-click the date and time portion in the corner of the taskbar and select Notification Settings.

Alternatively, you can use the Start menu to open the Settings app and select "System " section (open by default) notify".

Here you'll see an overview of your notification settings. You can disable notifications entirely, or click on the first option Notifications to expand the drop-down menu. This menu has some additional options, such as turning off notification sounds. You can also choose whether you want notifications to appear on the lock screen, including specific settings for reminders and incoming calls. Underneath that, there's Focus Assist, the Windows equivalent of Do Not Disturb. We'll see later.

You can also enable or disable notifications for each app. The apps shown here have only sent you at least one notification, so the list may not show apps you just installed. You can click on each app to get into more specific settings for that app, but we'll get to that later.

At the bottom of the page you can also find settings for some notifications from the Windows system itself. For example, you can turn off suggestions for how to use certain features, or if you want to see the Windows Welcome experience after you install a new feature update. This welcome experience lets you know what's new in the update, so it can be useful, but it's not for everyone.

Focus Assist

Focus Assist is Windows 11’s equivalent of Do Not Disturb, blocking almost all incoming notifications simply by enabling it. When you time the Focus Assist options in the page shown above, you can customize various settings related to the feature. For starters, you can choose to turn it off, or use the Priority or Alert settings. Priority mode lets you select certain notifications that get past Focus Assist, while Alert mode only lets alerts get through.

There's also an option here that lets you see notifications you missed while focus assist was enabled. With this feature enabled, you'll see a notification with a summary of everything you missed when you disable focus assist.

Underneath these options you are the Automated Rules section where in some cases Focus Assist will kick in automatically. There are options to enable it at specific times of day, as well as more special rules, such as when you duplicate a display or run a full-screen application. These can be useful so you don't get awkward notifications when showing your screen, or if you don't want to be interrupted while playing a game. Oddly, there's also a rule to disable notifications within the first hour after installing a feature update, and it's enabled by default.

If you click on any of these rules, you can choose whether you want focus assist to be turned on in priority mode or alert mode, and you can also choose whether you want to be notified when focus assist is automatically enabled.

Customize your priority list

As mentioned above, one of the options provided by Focus Assist is called Priority, if you think they are important , which allows selected apps to still send notifications. If you click Customize Priority List, you can choose to allow VoIP calls to go through as well as alert. Then, of course, you can select specific apps to add to your priority list so that notifications from those apps always appear. Some apps are added by default, but you can remove them or add some others.

There is also a section on this page that allows notification breakouts for certain people. This was based on the People app, however, it's basically unusable right now and it only includes Outlook contacts. Even though the app is built into Windows 11, it doesn't even work with Microsoft Teams contacts.

Customize per-app notification settings in Windows 11

Finally, let’s talk about notification settings for each app. As we mentioned above, the notification settings page (Settings -> System -> Notifications) allows you to turn notifications on or off for each app. However, you can also click on an app's name to view more detailed notification settings for that app.

For example. Let’s use Microsoft Teams since it’s built into Windows 11. When you open the app's notification settings, you'll see a few options. First, you can choose whether you want to display notification banners—these are small pop-ups that appear in the lower right corner of the screen. You can also choose whether you want these notifications to be visible in Notification Center, which you can open by clicking the date and time on the taskbar (or pressing the Windows keys and N on your keyboard) center.

#Additional options let you hide notification content on the lock screen so people can't see your notifications without entering a password or PIN. You can also turn off notification sounds and choose the priority of notifications from within the app. A higher priority means notifications will appear at the top of Notification Center, and if you receive multiple high-priority notifications, you'll also see up to three of them pop up at the same time instead of just one for a normal notification.

Notification Settings in Windows 11 Version 22H2

So far we have discussed notification settings in the original version of Windows 11, but you may already be running Windows 11 Version 22H2. This is the first feature update for Windows 11 and it brings some important changes to notification settings. In this version, if you go to the notification settings page (Settings -> System-> Notifications), it looks a little different, but most of the functionality is the same of.

For starters, Focus Assist has been renamed to Do Not Disturb so it's consistent with what you may already know from other platforms. It's also been simplified so it can be turned on or off, and you can no longer choose between priority or alert mode. Additionally, all Do Not Disturb settings are now available directly from the notifications page, without having to go to a separate page entirely.

#It’s also worth noting that the page for your custom priority lists has been updated with a new design and the useless people section we mentioned above has been removed.

Focus

Something new you will notice in the new Notifications page is Focus options. Here you can select options related to focus sessions, a feature introduced in Windows 11 as part of the Clock app. From this page, you can start a focus session, choose a duration, hide taskbar notification badges, and flash (when an app on the taskbar turns orange to draw your attention).

#When you start a focus session, it will enable the settings you selected on this page. If this interests you, you can learn more about the clock app in our deep dive.

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That’s everything you need to know about how to customize notification settings on your Windows 11 PC. If you're keen to learn more about Windows 11, we've got some other tutorials for you. We have a general tutorial on how to use Windows 11 overall, which is a great starting point for new users.

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