Notifications and the Notification Center

In this lesson for macOS Mojave, I look at the Notification Center on the Mac and how you can customize notifications for applications on the Mac.

Accessing the Notification Center
To access the Notification Center on your Mac, you click on the three horizontal lines in the upper right corner of the Mac display. If you have a trackpad, you can also swipe with two fingers from the right edge on the trackpad. Both of these techniques will slide out the Notification Center/Today View on the right side of the display. At the top of this slide out will be two tabs, one for the Notification Center, the other for the Today View. Click on the Notification Center. This will show you all your Notifications from various apps. Click on a notification to open that alert in the App that notified you.

Turning On Do Not Disturb
To turn on Do Not Disturb, swipe down while in the Notification Center or Today View. A slide will appear, turn the slider on to turn Do Not Disturb on. It will automatically switch back off on the next day.

Notification Options for Apps
To access how an app will notify you, open the System Preferences under the Apple Menu. Then click on Notifications. You can also click on the gear at the bottom of the Notification Center to open Notifications in the System Preferences.

Do Not Disturb Options
With Do Not Disturb, you can set it to turn on and off automatically at set times, turn on when the display is sleeping, and when you are mirroring your Mac to a TV or projector. You can also set if you want FaceTime calls to come through even when Do Not Disturb is on. You can allow calls from everyone or just people in your contacts, and allow calls that have been repeated within three minutes.

Application Notification Settings
Within each application that can notify you, you can see the type of alert you will receive. You can set it to none, banners, or alerts. None will not show any notifications at all, banners will show for a few seconds in the upper right corner of your Mac, and then they will disappear, and alerts will stay until you dismiss them.

You can also set if you want to show notifications on the lock screen, display a preview of the notification, show the notification in the Notification Center, show the notification as a badge app icon, and play a sound when you get a notification.

See this Lesson Action
To see this lesson in action, take a look at the video above.