For months, Google has been testing native Windows 10 notification support on Google Chrome, and now the company is getting ready to bring it to all users.
With native notifications, Chrome alerts will now go directly to the Windows 10 Action Center by default. Google is rolling the feature out to 50 percent of all Chrome 68 users as of writing, but it should be the default for majority of users in the coming days.
Chrome Now Supports Windows 10 Notifications
The rollout was first spotted by Thurrott. Chrome has, of course, been available on Windows for years and has supported notifications for the platform in the same span of time, but notifications on Windows 10 now work a lot more efficiently than before. Chrome hasn't been able to keep up quickly enough, opting instead to implement its own notification system.
That's going to change going forward. By contrast, however, Google debuted native notifications on macOS since Chrome 59, so Apple users have been enjoying native alerts for a while now.
What are the benefits of using native notifications, exactly? Well, as Thurrott explains, having the feature means Chrome users will be able to apply Windows 10's custom notification settings to the browser. They can limit the number of notifications that are displayed or edit prioritization options as they see fit. More importantly, since Chrome now works natively with Windows 10's notification system, it's also implemented into its Focus Assist, a do-not-disturb feature baked right into the operating system.
Obviously, users have to be running Windows 10 to take advantage of this feature, and they can always revert to Chrome's original notification system if they don't fancy the feature.
How To Turn It On Manually
If it's not turned on by default, users can manually toggle the feature by opening Chrome, inputting "chrome://flags" in the address bar, pressing enter, and then ticking the "Enable native notifications" option. That should force the feature right away.
As Bleeping Computer notes, Chrome is currently the most popular web browser in the world, taking a 60 percent market share. That's despite Microsoft Edge being the default browser on all Windows 10 devices. Edge is still lacking in the competition and accounts for less than 5 percent of the total market. Mozilla, meanwhile, is steadily making a comeback with its recently released Firefox Quantum browser, which promises to be faster than Chrome in many aspects.
