Websites find no end of ways to wind up their visitors. Autoplaying videos, massive pop-ups and constant badgering to ‘allow notifications’. If you ever catch us doing any of this tripe at The Big Tech Question, feel free to slap our co-editors with a wet haddock. In the meantime, here’s how to stop sites asking to allow notifications in Firefox.
Switch off notification requests in Firefox
This is a new feature in Firefox 59, the latest version of the browser that was released this week. First, you need to make sure you have Firefox 59 or later by clicking on the menu button in the top right-hand corner of the browser and selecting Help > About Firefox. If you don’t have the latest version, this should prompt Firefox to download it.
Once the browser has installed, open that top menu again and choose Options (it’s called Preferences on the Mac version of the browser for reasons that defy all logic). Now click Privacy and Security on the left-hand side and scroll down to Permissions. Click on the Settings button next to Notifications, and you should see a screen like this.
Here you’ll see the option at the bottom of the window to ‘Block new requests asking to allow notifications’ – tick that box and the pestering will stop.
Notifications can be useful from selected sites, such as the web version of WhatsApp, which tells you when you’ve got a new message. You can add sites to an exemption list, as shown above, so that they can continue to send you notifications.
Bear in mind, however, that you won’t see any sign that a site even offers notifications if you tick that ‘Block new requests…’ box at the bottom of the screen. If you desperately want notifications from a new site that you visit, you’ll have to temporarily untick that box, visit the site, accept its notifications request and then apply the blanket ban once more.
Now read this: why can’t I make Firefox the default browser in Windows 10?
Add Comment