Tip of the Week: How to Customize Your Windows 10 Notifications

Windows 10 has been issued updates that provide users with brand new ways to receive notifications. While you can go through Android and iOS’s Cortana app, there’s a better way to manage your notifications. We’ll walk you through the process of customizing your Windows 10 notifications.

On the Lock Screen
One of the more controversial uses of notifications in Windows 10 is on the lock screen. While this is great for times when you don’t want to log into your device, it can be considered a privacy concern. If you’d like to remove all notifications from the lock screen, go through Settings > System > Notifications & actions > Notifications. Then, turn off the switch for Show notifications on the lock screen. If you want to hide certain notifications from appearing on the lock screen, go through System > Notifications & actions > Get notifications from these senders. Now select the app that you want to change and turn it On under the Keep notifications private on the lock screen option.

Set Priority Notifications
If you receive notifications from several sources, it’s clear that not every single one of them is a priority. Thankfully, Windows 10 makes it easy to set certain apps to varying priority levels. You can set them to either Normal, High, or Top priority in order to layer them into groups based on importance. Go to Settings > System > Notifications & actions > Get notifications from these senders, and select the app that you want to configure. Under Priority of notifications in the action center, assign it a priority level.

You can also choose how many of an app’s notifications will appear in the Action Center at any one time. The default is three, but you can extend this number all the way to 20. Change this setting by going to Number of notifications visible in Action Center.

Change the Sounds of Your Notifications
To further customize your notifications, you can remove or change their sounds. All you have to do is go through Settings > System > Notifications & actions > Get notifications from these senders > Your Chosen App > Play a sound when a notification arrives. Right-click the Start button and select the Control Panel. Select sound and you’ll open up a menu. In Program Events, scroll down to Notification and select it. Underneath the Sounds dropdown you can change the sound that plays when you receive a notification. If you’d rather not have sounds play for your notifications, just select None.

Turn Off Notifications
If you aren’t keen on notifications in the first place, you can turn them all off at once. If you don’t mind them, you can limit how many apps are allowed to send you notifications. Go through Settings > System > Notifications & actions > Notifications > Get notifications from apps and other senders. Select the apps from which you want to receive notifications under Get notifications from these senders.

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