Frequently Asked Question

⚠ If this article doesn't resolve your issue, or if you have any problems or confusion, be sure to open a helpdesk ticket. 

If you're seeing a lot of notifications in Windows that seem to be strange or unsavory, the most likely explanation is that at some point, a website asked you for permission to send you notifications, and you must have clicked Allow instead of Block.

Occasionally, shadier sites will use this permission to spam you with ads or links to malicious sites. These come through Windows notifications, since Chrome ties into the native Windows notification system. Windows notifications appear in the lower right corner of your screen.

A request for notification permission might look like any of the following, depending on how the site is asking and whether you're on desktop or mobile:

On especially duplicitous sites, you might even see them switch the positions or coloring of the No Thanks/Block/Cancel and Allow/Accept buttons in an attempt to trick you into accepting, so be careful and always read any dialog box or popup carefully before interacting!

There are completely legitimate uses for sites sending you notifications, too. You might actually want Gmail to issue them when you get a new message, or you might want notifications from Google Drive when someone shares a new document with you, for example.

Blocking notifications from a website in Chrome

In order to disable notifications for this site, you'll need to go to the menu in the upper right corner in Chrome ( ⋮ ), click to open, then select Settings.

Once the Chrome settings are open, the easiest way to find the settings for Notifications is to just use the bar at the top to search for that term. Chrome will highlight the Site settings option, since that's where notification settings live.

You should click on Site settings, then on Notifications on the next page of settings.

At the top of the Notifications settings page, you'll see your list of sites where you've chosen to Block notifications. Below that is the list of sites where you've chosen to Allow notifications. You should locate the site that's misusing notifications, click the menu ( ⋮ ) button at the right-hand end of its line, and choose Block from that list to stop the offending site from sending notifications.

Determining which site is spamming you

If you're not sure which site has been spamming you after looking at the list, you can find that information by looking at your notification history. Start by clicking on the notifications button at the far right end of your taskbar (at the bottom of the screen, see orange arrow).

This will cause a panel to slide out from the right-hand side of your screen. In this panel, your notification history will be in the top half. You can find the site a notification came from by looking at the details in the notification. Some might be a bit different from this one, as they might have pictures or other content, but the URI for the site should be in roughly the same place. (See orange circles.) Compare that with your list of allowed sites, and then block that one.