You can follow these steps detailed below to block Chrome notifications from websites that you have granted access to in the past.
Most websites used to have to rely on email newsletters in order to alert loyal readers to new content that has been published on their website. These could be sent out daily, weekly or even monthly and it was great for both the website and the reader since it was voluntary.
As more people have shifted to smartphones, web browser developers have added in features that let the user subscribe to new posts from a website with the device’s notification system.
So instead of getting notified via email about new content from a website, you sometimes have the ability to get notifications sent to your smartphone. Just like creating a newsletter though, work needs to be done first by the website developer before it can be implemented. With emails, a simple unsubscribe button was displayed at the bottom but to block Chrome notifications you will need to dive into the Settings of the web browser and manually block them.
These need to be manually blocked by each website because the only way to get these is by manually approving them. I’ve received a few emails asking me to unsubscribe people from them, but this needs to be done on your end and now I can just point these people to this tutorial 🙂
Block Chrome Notifications
- Launch the Chrome application
- Tap the 3-dot menu icon at the top right
- Tap the Settings option
- Tap the Site Settings option
- Tap the Notifications option
- Tap the website you want to block notifications from
- Tap the Notifications option
- Choose the Block option
- Then press the Home button
Explanation
I was really confused when I first started to get emails from readers who were asking me to unsubscribe them. Because along with the notification system that I set up here, there’s also an email newsletter that the readers can subscribe to. I do this as a way to offer multiple options to the readers instead of forcing them to use notifications or forcing them to use email. The first few requests confused me as I was unable to find their email in the newsletter email list.
Then I asked if it was a Chrome notification and the reader was able to confirm this. This method is completely controlled by the end user, so besides shutting down the entire system for the 18,000+ people who are getting these subscriptions, I have no control over them. I wrote out this guide a few times but now have decided to just create a tutorial for everyone here on the website. So to start off, you’ll need to launch the Chrome application and then tap the 3-dot menu icon at the top right of the screen.
This will drop down a list of a number of things to choose from but we just want to tap on the Settings option at the bottom. From here, look for the Advanced menu section and then tap on the Site Settings option. This will bring up a number of permissions that Chrome has features for and we’re going to focus on the Notifications so go ahead and tap that one. Now, you’ll likely see two sections at this next area with one group of websites under Blocked and another group of websites under Allowed.
Here, you’ll want to find the website you no longer wish to receive notifications from and tap on it. This will bring you to another page where you can tap the Notification option and then be given the choice between Allow and Block. You’ll simply want to tap on the Block option and then you can tap the Home button to go back to the Home screen. Once that is done, you should no longer receive notifications about new content from that specific website.
Alternatively, you can also tap the toggle at the top of the page that lists the websites and this will prevent Chrome from popping up that subscription notice when you visit a website. I may write a dedicated tutorial for that in the future for those who are annoyed of that pesky popup at the bottom.
