How to turn off notifications in Google Chrome

Notification spam is a real problem with many websites, especially local news websites, tricking you through dark patterns to enable notifications. 

Once you allow notifications, these sites will spam you through Chrome's notification system about new content and stories appearing on their website in the hope that you will click the message to return to their site, in return letting them generate revenue from the ads they display on the webpage.

Google and other browser makers are working on technologies to reduce spam notifications and to make it more transparent how to turn off notifications. However, turning it off is still rather complex if you have not been shown where to go and what to click to disable unwanted notifications. 

Follow these steps to turn off unwanted notifications:

  • Go to the website that is sending the unwanted notifications

  • Click on the padlock icon in the address bar

  • From the menu that appears, toggle off notifications

  • Reload the webpage using the button that appears under the address bar.

You will now have disabled notifications from that website.