How to Take Full Control of Notifications on MacOS
App notifications require careful balancing between Android , iOS , Windows and, of course, macOS. Too many and you’re constantly distracted; too few and you risk missing something important one of your apps is trying to tell you.
macOS helps you find the right balance by providing a full set of controls for managing interruptions and receiving notifications. Setting up these notification settings doesn’t take long, and once they’re set up, you can use Focus Modes for specific scenarios (like working or watching movies).
Note that some individual apps have their own notification settings, in addition to the options macOS gives you (and tricks you can do with third-party tools ). Discord, for example, gives you a bunch of options for choosing what you get notified about.
App notification settings
Every macOS app must ask for permission to show notifications when it’s first installed. However you answer that first prompt, you can customize notifications for all installed apps at any time by opening the Apple menu from the macOS menu bar (top left), then choosing System Preferences & Notifications .
First, you get the ability to set notification preferences for the entire operating system: you can choose whether pop-ups appear when your Mac is locked, when the display is asleep, when you mirror or share your screen. You can control whether previews appear with notifications by default, and you can also give Apple Intelligence permission to summarize your notifications .
Next, you can manage notifications for individual apps. As with iOS, there are a few tweaks here: in addition to turning notifications on or off entirely for each of your apps, you can also change the type of alert that appears (temporary banner or permanent pop-up) and set the app’s notification to sound or not. There’s also a toggle to show that app’s alerts in macOS’s Notification Center, which appears when you tap the time and date (top right).
There are also settings for notification previews and grouping notifications for each individual app. The idea is that you can highlight the most important apps while hiding notifications from smaller apps in the background (or turning them off altogether). If you set notifications as Alerts , they will remain in the top-right corner of the display until you dismiss them.
Focus modes
Once you have your individual app notification settings set up the way you want, you can use Focus Modes to override those settings. When it comes to macOS, this will likely include the traditional Do Not Disturb mode, which will block any alerts for a set period of time.
Switch from Notifications to Focus in System Preferences on macOS to see the available modes: You can use these preset modes, or click Add Focus Mode to create your own. There’s also a Share Across Devices toggle right below the list of Focus modes, which you can turn off if you don’t want all of your iPhone’s modes to show up on macOS (and vice versa).
The settings screen for each mode contains specific settings for which notifications are allowed to appear. Tap Allowed People to choose which contacts can trigger notifications when the mode is enabled, and Allowed Apps to do the same for apps. There’s also a Smart Breakthrough and Mute toggle that you can turn on to give macOS permission to show notifications it deems important .
Your modes are easily accessible via Control Center in the menu bar, in the top-right corner of the screen (the icon that looks like two toggle switches), and from the System Preferences pane. Click that icon, then Focus , and you can choose from a list of modes or go back to the Focus Settings screen.
Sync with iPhone and iPad
With Apple’s Continuity suite of features, you can sync call and message notifications across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, as long as they’re all signed in to the same Apple account. That’s handy if you want to be able to take iPhone calls on your laptop, but not so useful if you’re trying to get some work done on macOS without interruption.
You have a few options to get out of this situation, including simply disabling FaceTime messages and notifications on macOS. On your iPhone, open Settings, then select Cellular , and you’ll get the Calls on Other Devices menu, where you can turn off the toggles for all connected Macs. There’s a similar setting for text messages, which you can find in iOS settings by tapping Apps > Messages > Forward Text Messages .
This will stop cell phone calls and SMS/RCS messages from showing up on your Mac, although due to the way Apple Continuity works, you’ll still see FaceTime calls and iMessage updates on macOS. To change this, you’ll need to go to FaceTime > Preferences and Messages > Preferences on your Mac.
In both cases, you get the option to turn off connections via your mobile phone number or sign out of your Apple account entirely for those specific apps. You can choose the options you want based on how much connectivity you want on your Mac (including the ability to send messages and initiate calls from your desktop).