Google Chrome will be getting along a little better with OS X's Notification Center.
Mac users who made Chrome their default browser likely noticed how the software's notifications stick out like a sore thumb.
If, for example, a user has their Google Calendar synced with OS X's Calendar, they'd get two notifications for the same single event. Calendar's notifications, of course, are slick and sleek by popping out of the corner of the screen while remaining available as a persistent reminder inside Notification Center.
Google's Chrome notifications, on the other hand, abruptly appear and disappear in that yellow-tinged pop up bubble for few seconds, never to be seen again. More annoying, if Chrome's window is out of view, a notification will bring it back in front of everything else.
For Mac users with tight workflows, such disruptions have become a daily annoyance. Thankfully, Google seems to have finally caught on and is doing something about it by natively supporting notifications in Apple's OS X.
But Google is taking it by baby steps, and hasn't completely conformed to OS X's standards. The experimental feature can be manually turned on by typing in "chrome://flags/#enable-native-notifications" in Chrome's search and URL address bar. Enabling the feature should do the trick.
As simple as that, all the annoyances that came with Google Chrome handling its own notifications will be gone. Ultimately, Chrome's native OS X notifications are visually more attractive and also continue to be listed in Notification Center. It's easier on the eyes and more convenient to access notifications from Google.
At the same time, some users seem to hate this change and criticize Google for trying to do too much.
"This just showed up on my Mac (I don't restart Chrome very often). It's annoying, intrusive, and ignorant of OS UI/UX paradigms. Furthermore, the inability to remove it easily (such as CMD-dragging off the menu bar, or offering a "remove icon" item when clicking on the icon) is absurd, requiring users to search the internet and discover a largely undocumented and non-user-friendly means to disable it via chrome://flags," shares one user over the Chromium blog.
If you gave it a shot, drop by our comment section below and tell us what you think of it.
