Soon, Google Chrome will block those annoying notification requests
What's the story
Every internet user knows how annoying it is to deal with pop-ups that seek permissions to send notifications. They appear on almost every website you visit, taking over the entire screen and ruining the whole experience of browsing. But, the good news is, Google is working on a solution, a feature that would automatically block these notification requests in Chrome. Here's all about it.
Feature
Chrome will make notification requests 'quieter'
During a recent teardown of the latest version of Chrome for Android, the folks at XDA-Developers unearthed a flag promising to make notification requests a tad 'quieter'. "Enables quieter permission prompts for notification permission requests," the description of the feature read, indicating that when a site wishes to show notifications, the usual modal dialog would be replaced with something less intrusive.
Working
Apparently, this flag could work in three different ways
On digging further, the outlet discovered that the capability would automatically block notification requests in Chrome to make things silent for the users. However, while doing so, the browser won't ditch website owners completely. It would inform users about the blocking action either through permanent/temporary push notifications or a Chrome info-bar (appearing at the bottom) saying that a request has been blocked.
Management
Notifications/info-bars will have buttons to unblock requests
Notably, the notifications and info-bars displayed by Chrome after blocking a notification request will also have the option to undo that action. It will display a button called 'Manage,' which will allow you to open Chrome's Site Settings page, see which notification requests have been blocked, and unblock them without any confusion. Currently, you have to dig into settings to get to this page.
Other platforms
Similar capability spotted for desktop/Chrome OS
Going by the XDA report, a similar flag is in development for Chrome OS as well as the desktop version of the browser. However, as of now, it is not clear when or if the capability would show up in a stable release of the browser. Google is definitely working on the capability, but may or may not go ahead with it.