Google’s Chrome web browser is about to become much less noisy.
On Friday, the technology giant announced a new feature that will automatically disable browser notifications for the websites you haven’t interacted with recently, disrupting their ability to pop up alerts and updates that you may no longer be interested in.
The feature will launch on Chrome on Android and on desktop.
The feature expands on existing functionality already available in Chrome’s Safety Check feature, which revokes camera and location permissions from websites you don’t visit anymore.
The company tacitly admits that browser notifications, as designed, might have been a bad idea, saying that its own data shows users receive a high volume of notifications but rarely interact with them. Less than 1% of all notifications receive any interactions from users, notes Google.
Still, the tech giant believes some notifications can be helpful, which is why it won’t revoke those for installed web apps — only for the sites where there’s low user engagement and high volume of notifications sent. This change alone could push spammy websites that push a lot of notifications to reconsider how many they want to send alerts, so they won’t lose access entirely.
Unwanted notifications have been an issue facing consumers for years. On the iPhone, for instance, Apple was forced to add controls that let users send their push notifications to a daily summary, mute them, or turn them off altogether from the notification message itself, after consumer frustrations with the notification system grew.
Google says it will inform users when it’s removing notification permissions, allowing users to change the setting back, if they prefer. If users would rather Google didn’t intervene, they can also opt to turn off this auto-revocation feature altogether, the company notes.
The feature had been in testing ahead of today’s official launch. Google found that these changes didn’t significantly impact the total number of clicks on notifications, an indication that people weren’t really engaging much with these pop-ups to begin with.
