Unless you’ve dived into your settings to deal with them, browsing the web means having to battle with those irritating notification permission requests that want to serve up site announcements or even ads.
Sure, you can deal with these requests in a click or two, but it’s still an unwelcome interruption that can prevent what should be an annoyance-free surfing experience.
For Firefox users, Mozilla is on the case and is working on a feature for an upcoming version of its desktop browser that will automatically hide notification permission requests. Other kinds of permission requests, such as those asking to use your machine’s microphone or camera, will continue to show.
Mozilla decided to act against the notification requests after its own research revealed just how unpopular they are among web users.
Its data showed that around 99% of notification prompts are rejected by web users, with many leaving the site without even clicking an option.
Other data showed that during a single month of the Firefox 63 release, only 23.66 million prompts were accepted out of a total of 1.45 billion.
In a message posted on its website this week, Mozilla said that starting with Firefox 70, it will replace the default “Not Now” option that shows with notification permission requests with “Never,” which will effectively hide the prompt on a page from then on.
And beginning with Firefox 72, which should roll out in January 2020, the only way for a user to see the prompt will be by clicking on the notification icon that will appear in the address bar at the top of the page.
Or you can dive into Settings …
In 2018, Firefox introduced a new setting that allows users to manually opt out of receiving a range of permission requests. Mozilla said that while the feature has been well received, most of its users are oblivious to it as they never go into their settings.
If you’re interested in taking action now, it’s really simple. Just click on the three lines at the top right of your Firefox browser, then on Preferences, and Privacy & Security. Scroll down until you see Permissions, and then click on Settings beside Notifications. Finally, click on the box that says, “Block new requests asking to allow notifications,” and finally on Save Changes. While you’re there, you can take a look at the settings for your other permissions.
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