What are push notifications and what is the best way to manage them?

  By Alyssa – Reading time: 5 min.


Today, we answer all your questions about push notifications and help you take control of when and how you receive them:

✓  What is a push notification?
✓  What does a push notification look like?
✓  Should I allow push notifications?
✓  Can I turn off push notifications?
✓  How do I silence notifications on my Android device?
✓  How do I mute push notifications on my iPhone
✓  How disable app notifications on an Android device
✓  How to configure app notifications on an iPhone
✓  How to manage push notifications in a web browser
✓  FAQ: Push notifications

What is a push notification?

A push notification is a small message that pops up on your smartphone, tablet, or computer web browser.  They can serve a variety of purposes – from breaking weather alerts to letting you know about a new email in your inbox or reminding you about an upcoming appointment.

Normally, push notifications will only be sent to your phone or web browser if you subscribe or opt-in to receiving them.
 

 What does a push notification look like?

Push notifications are displayed in many different forms. In your web browser, for example, a push message will usually appear in a text box in a corner of the screen. A push notification on your phone can take many shapes – a banner at the top of the screen, a pop-up that covers the whole screen, or, if your phone is locked, a notification on the lock screen. Sometimes you will also be alerted by a sound, light, or vibration.

Should I allow push notifications?

Push notifications can be convenient. Without them, it would be necessary to open each app separately and check for new messages or information. For example, you would have to open your weather app to see if there was a thunderstorm on the way.

So, it makes sense to allow push notifications in cases where there might be incoming information you don’t want to miss. But it also pays to be selective with which notifications you allow.

Can I mute push notifications?

The constant ringing, pinging, or vibrating of your smartphone or countless pop-ups all over your browser screen can be distracting and even downright stressful. If you are receiving non-stop notifications, you’ll probably miss the ones that are truly important. And of course, you don't want to be distracted by non-essential push notifications at work or woken up by them at night.

Luckily you have control of when and what push notifications you’d like to receive, with several different options for temporarily disabling or permanently opting out of some or all alerts.

Use your smartphone’s modes to mute notifications

Your smartphone will let you temporarily mute all notifications in a single tap using ”Focus” modes (iPhone) or “Do Not Disturb”/”Modes” (Android).  This allows you to silence notifications while still defining exceptions, e.g., so calls or texts from family members can still come through.

What these different modes all have in common is that they let you decide when your smartphone will not receive some or all notifications.

Muting notifications on Android smartphone

The exact names and paths may vary depending on your Android version and manufacturer, but generally you can mute notifications as follows:

1. Open Settings
2. Tap Notifications
3. Select Do Not Disturb (or Modes on some devices)
4. Turn it on immediately or schedule it for specific times 

Many Android devices also support Modes and Routines, allowing you to automatically mute notifications while driving, sleeping, or during meetings. These options are usually found under Settings > Modes or Settings > Digital Wellbeing.

Muting notifications on iPhone

On an iPhone, notifications are muted using Focus modes such as Do Not Disturb, Sleep, or Work.

1. Open Control Center
2. Tap Focus
3. Select a Focus mode (e.g. Sleep or Do Not Disturb)
4. When the mode is active, its name will appear at the top of your screen 

Tap the Focus button again to turn the mode off.

Configure Sleep mode on your iPhone

To configure Sleep or other Focus modes on your iPhone, you can either go to your Control Center or Settings and tap “Focus.” Now you can configure each mode to allow or turn off notifications from specific apps.  Here’s how it works:

1. Go to Settings > Focus
2. Select a Focus mode (e.g. Sleep or Work)
3. Choose which people and apps are allowed to send notifications
4. Optionally set a schedule, location, or app that activates the Focus mode automatically 

iPhones also offer a Scheduled Notification Summary, which groups non-urgent notifications and delivers them at chosen times instead of interrupting you throughout the day.

Use Flight mode or disconnect from internet to mute notifications

A quick fix if you’d like to stop notifications immediately is to put your phone into flight mode or disconnect from the internet – or (shock, horror) you could just turn off your phone. Phones and other devices need an internet connection to load new notifications, so without internet access, push notifications will not reach you at all. However, as soon as you are back online, your notifications will come flooding in again.

How do I disable and enable push notifications?

Instead of muting push notifications temporarily, you can also disable some or all of them completely. Don’t worry – if you change your mind, you can enable them again following the same steps.

How to turn off app push notifications on an Android device

Again, the exact names of the settings will differ based on your model. Here are some options for turning off notifications on an Android device:

Option 1: In your phone’s Settings

1. Open Settings > Notifications
2. Tap App notifications
3. Select an app
4. Turn notifications off completely, or
5. Tap individual notification categories (e.g. promotions, messages) to control them separately

Option 2: Directly in a notification

1. Press and hold a notification
2. Tap Turn off notifications or Settings
3. Choose whether to disable all notifications or only certain types

How to disable push notifications on an iPhone

Your iPhone and/or iPad offers lots of options to customize how you’d like to receive (or not receive) push notifications, but there is no silver-bullet option that lets you turn off all notifications all of the time.

You can enable, disable, and otherwise customize notifications for each app on your iPhone as follows:

1. Go to Settings > Notifications
2. Select an app by tapping on it
3. To disable notifications, turn off the slider next to Allow Notifications
4. If you don’t want to completely turn off notifications, you can also customize the settings here, e.g., you can stop notifications from appearing on your lock screen (where other people might see them when your phone is turned off). You can also choose how notifications are delivered, for example via banners, scheduled summaries, or quiet delivery, depending on how important the app is to you.
5. Repeat this process for each app where you’d like to turn off /modify notifications.  

How to manage notifications in your web browser

Push notifications aren’t just available for mobile devices. When visiting a website, most of us have probably had a pop-up ask us if we want to receive notifications for that site. Don’t worry: If you’ve allowed or declined push notifications for a site and then had regrets, you can always go back and change your settings.
Here is how you can disable push notifications in your web browser:

• Mozilla Firefox: Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Permissions > Notifications. Here you can allow, block, or remove websites and prevent new permission requests.
• Google Chrome: Go to Settings > Privacy and security > Site Settings > Notifications. You can block sites, remove permissions, or stop websites from asking to send notifications.
• Microsoft Edge: Go to Settings > Cookies and site permissions > Notifications to manage allowed and blocked sites.
• Safari (macOS): Go to Safari > Settings > Websites > Notifications to manage which websites can send notifications. Safari may also group or silence notifications automatically to reduce interruptions.

 
We hope this post helped you regain control of the notifications on your device! And if you still don’t have a free email account with mail.com, why not sign up here?

This article first appeared on October 26, 2023, and was updated on December 15, 2025

Images: 1&1/iStock

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