Turn off push notifications in Safari and prevent permission questions

Safari tips and tricks

After writing a report yesterday on how to Turns off push notifications from Firefox and permanently removed those stupid popup permission question windows, the question immediately arose how to change this in Safari. I just checked it and it's amazingly easy to do - a lot easier than with Chrome (here are the instructions) or Firefox, where you have to mess around in the advanced settings.

What are push notifications?

For the readers who have not yet fully understood what this is about: I mean these windows that pop up all over the place on some websites and ask you whether you would like to be informed about new contributions from these pages in the future. Here is an example of another Apple-related site, whose logo and name I have pixelated away:

An example of push notifications from web pages in Safari. Such popup windows are often annoying when surfing.
An example of push notifications from web pages in Safari. Such popup windows are often annoying when surfing.

If you now click on “Allow” in these windows, you get a small window in the notification center on the Mac (usually at the top right), which always informs you when a new post has appeared on the page. The problem: With hard-working writers or many websites, this can be several times a day. So you are always “disturbed” by such small messages while working.

Safari messages land in the message center

What is a bit surprising at first: The push notifications that inform you about new posts look like they come from an app on the Mac. In fact, they are triggered by Safari. With other browsers such as Chrome or Firefox, these messages only appear in the browser and only when the browser is started. As a user, one understands the connection between the person who caused the message and the push notification itself much more quickly.

With Safari, the integration into macOS is of course "better", so that the push messages end up in the notification center. This has also caused some readers to believe that I was sending them unauthorized reports. In practice, however, it is technically not possible without the reader having clicked the "Allow" button at least once. And ultimately, you can only turn off these messages yourself. I have no influence on this and I can't delete anyone, as is the case with a newsletter.

Instructions for canceling the web push notifications

But now to the parking of those annoying little things. The instructions for doing this are relatively simple on Safari:

  1. Open Safari
  2. Select “Settings” in the “Safari” menu at the top left.
  3. Then click on “Websites” in the top tab.
  4. Click on “Notifications” in the left menu.
  5. A list of websites appears there that you have either allowed or forbidden to send push messages to. Here you can set the status to "Do not allow" if you only want to turn off the Psuh messages for one website.
  6. If you also want to turn off the question window, uncheck the “Allow websites to ask for permissions to send push notifications” option below.

Here again the individual points in the screenshot:

The settings for push notifications in Safari can be found under the Websites and Notifications tab. If you remove the tick at the bottom of the screenshot, you can be sure that you will no longer be bothered with the question of permission for push messages in the future.
The settings for push notifications in Safari can be found under the Websites and Notifications tab. If you remove the tick at the bottom of the screenshot, you can be sure that you will no longer be bothered with the question of permission for push messages in the future.

I hope I have made your “working life” on the Mac a little better with this guide. Personally, I don't miss those windows and messages at all. But I would be interested to know if any of you actually use this push service to be informed about news on a website! Feel free to leave a comment if you like! :D

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5 thoughts on “Turn off push notifications in Safari and disable permission requests”

  1. Excellent! Thanks for the hint. Obviously I haven't rummaged through Safari's preferences for too long. Asking about the location (thanks Wetter.com) I drove out of the program right away.

    Then I discovered something else interesting: in the Safari menu there is an entry “Settings for this website”. This makes a window with the settings for zoom, location, camera, etc. This eliminates the need to search for the website in the various places in the preferences. The window looks like you can't edit it. However, if you move the mouse over the values, you will see a pop-up menu. And you can edit the values. I find it very useful.

    1. Hello Beatrix! Thank you for your hint! Yes, I've also seen the menu item, but haven't tried it yet. Sounds like a practical shortcut though! : D

  2. Hello Jens, Thank you very much for this hint, which I immediately carried out. It's really annoying when these windows that I don't want appear again and again.
    Greetings, Anna

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