Turning off/cancelling notifications

Feedback Beta Builds
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I am running Brave beta. I constantly get messages asking for whether I want notificaitons, I always say no. And still I get some notifications. And I have no idea (despite searching) how to turn it off once and for all. Do you?

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@Pitosalas,
Make sure you are posting your support requests in the correct category - in this case it would be the Beta Builds category. I’ve moved this post there on our behalf.

If you’d like to block notifications by default (and not receive pop-ups):

  1. Open the main menu
  2. Navigate to Settings --> Advanced --> Privacy/Security --> Content Settings --> Notifications
  3. Toggle these off so that the value is now set to Blocked

You should no longer be asked if you’d like to receive notifications from a website.

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I am receiving notifications from sites not on this list:

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Pito Salas

Brandeis Computer Science

Volen 134

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Just to close it up, that toggle at the top will block all sits from asking to display notifications:

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Can you show me what sites send you notifications? A screenshot of the notification itself would be helpful as well.

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I keep getting notifications and I’ve not (wittingly) signed up for any! Here is my notifications settings… It’s nearly empty (and still I didn’t put any of them there :slight_smile:

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Because I guess the UI is so unclear that I have no idea what “Ask before sending” means. Can you clarify. Also how do things end up become notifications without any indication or action on my part?

Pito Salas
Brandeis Computer Science
Volen 134

8

I think maybe there’s some general confusion around terminology here. In Content Settings --> Notifications as shown in the images above, this setting refers to sending Desktop notifcations to your machine.

For example, if you were to login to Community for the first time, with the settings set the way they are in @Pitosalas image, https://community.brave.com/ will prompt and ask you if you’d like to allow it to send you notifications.

If you elect to Allow them, you will receive pop-up notifications on your machine while browsing should you get one on your Community account. This is the same way the Brave Ads platform issues/notifies its users of an ad.

I apologize if this is obvious to anyone reading this – but I bring it up because I often run into support scenarios where users reference “notifications” that appear in browser, but they’re referring to general permissions prompts/modals (eg “Do you want to save login information for [some site]?”) that display when a site requests access to something.

So my question for you, @Pitosalas, is whether or not you’d like to disable:

Notifications – Pop-out desktop notifications displayed when a notifications is received on a site in the Allowed list?
or

User Prompts/Permission Request Modal – Modal window that often asks you to Allow or Deny site access to some function or data from the user?

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I Thanks @mattches… I think there are bugs in this code (btw I am running beta.) I don’t remember ever being asked for permission to have notifications. And I am getting notifications from multiple web sites that I visited in passing. Something is weird.

So if “ask before sending” is OFF does that mean that I am accepting to be notified automatically? Or does it mean that I am declining notifications automatically?

Also how do things end up on the block or allow lists?

Pito Salas

Brandeis Computer Science

Volen 134

10

Observe the short recording I’ve taken below:

prompts1
prompts11353×759 3.71 MB

  • As you can see, after browsing https://cnet.com for a moment, the site issue a prompt asking if it can send me notifications.
  • I elect to decline this offer and click Block – now, https://cnet.com/ appears in the Block list in the [...] Content Settings --> Notifications section.
  • Alternatively, clicking Allow would have enabled desktop notifications for the site and subsequently added it to the Allow list.

The option I highlighted in my initial reply is relevant to your last question:
You’ll notice that toggling this option (below) changes the text on the left which describes the behavior you’re expected to see depending on which state the toggle is in.

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In the “on” state (for lack of a better term) as shown above, Brave will Ask you any (and every) time a site requests permission to send you notifications. That is, if a site offers this functionality, you will see a pop-up modal (like the one displayed on cnet in the recording above) to either Block or Allow this site from sending you notifications.
Note: Hitting the ‘X’ executes “no action” and the site will not be blocked or allowed – instead, you’ll simply be prompted again the next time you visit the site.

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If in the “off” state, the text changes to Blocked indicating that Any website that requests permission to send you notifications will receive a Block response from Brave upon request (this happens in the background – you will not actually see a prompt in this state).

In a nutshell

With respect to notifications you have the following options:

  1. Have websites that offer notifications Ask you for permission before sending them.
    • Requires user action (Block or Allow in modal)
    • Enabled via toggle in Content Settings --> Notifications
  2. Block all site requests to send notifications by default
    • Requires no user action (done in background automatically)
    • Enabled via toggle in Content Settings --> Notifications
    • Note that any sites previously entered in the Allow list will still be allowed/displayed. This setting does not retroactively alter these lists. Furthermore, you may continue to add sites to the Allow list while this setting is on to fine tune how you’d like Brave to handle these requests.
  3. Manually enter URLs into [Block/Allow] list in Content Settings --> Notifications

Please let me know if any of this is unclear or if you have yet-unaddressed questions surrounding the issue.

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Oh, wow, I’ve been wanting that for ages but thought that toggling that switch would go to “Allow” by default. <facepalm> I should have actually tried toggling it since I find the requests as annoying as I anticipate the notifications would be, so thank you very much for explaining.

It would be a lot clearer if the options were on either side of the button so that if it’s on the one side it’s next to “Block” and on the other next to “Ask before allowing site to send them”. Having a toggle showing only one option is harder to parse, particularly for old codgers like me who actually used to add toggle switches to rotary phones to make them multiple line phones.

3 Likes
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Thanks!

A couple of points:

  • I am pretty sure that I have received many notifications “subscriptions” without having the popup asking me if it was ok. I am running beta.

  • The settings for notifications is buried and in an inexplicable place in the settings hierarchy. I would recommend moving it up to somewhere more

  • From a UI perspective, I think the prompt for a slider should not change totally when I click on or off. The prompt would better be a “radio button”:

When a site offers to enable notifications:

** (o) Prompt user to approve or decline**

** (o) Reject notification offers silently**

FWIW. But I think I understand how it works now.

Thanks,

Pito Salas

Brandeis Computer Science

Volen 134

2 Likes
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While there are some possible explanations for this – if you’d imported browsing data from another browser where these permissions were set to Allow these notifications, for example – as far as I know, there is no way to accept permissions requests (unless the site is on the Allow list)

I fully agree with this and I believe our design team too. The first wave of new Settings and UI design changes will hit release soon that should help surface these and other settings.

  1. In most cases, radio buttons specify the different options for the user to select from, followed by a “submit” button of some kind. This allows the user to consider their choice and change it if desired before “answering” – making this (often frequent) prompt 2 actions.
  2. Note that the prompt only adds items to either the Block or Allow list. The toggle controls the behavior of the prompt.

Thank you for your feedback and patience!
Feel free to open a new topic should you have any further questions.

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