The Notification Center on your Mac is just as handy as the one on your iPhone or iPad. The Today View is perfect for those apps you use all the time like weather or a to-do list. The Notifications View lets you quickly glance at notifications you’ve received and missed.
You can easily forget that you have this convenient spot on your Mac. And at the same time, it can get so full that it’s just overwhelming to use. Customizing the Notification Center is key to making it work for you and here’s how to do it.
The apps in the Today View are easy to add and remove. Open your Notification Center by clicking the button on the top right of your menu bar. Click Today and at the bottom of the window, click Edit.
On the left, you’ll see the apps currently in your Today View and on the right, you’ll see others you can add.
To remove an app from Today View, click the minus sign in red on the corner of the app. You’ll see it move from the left to the right.
To add an app to Today View, click the plus sign in green next to the app. You’ll see it move from the left to the top on the right.
To rearrange apps in Today View, select one, hold and drag it to its new position in the list, and release.
You’ll notice at the bottom of the editing window a button for App Store. If you click this, you’ll be taken right to the Mac App Store to a page with additional widgets you can download if you like.
After you finish removing, adding, or rearranging apps in Today View, click Done on the bottom left to close the editing window.
Customize the Notifications View Settings
Open your Notification Center by clicking the button on the top right of your menu bar. Click Notifications and at the bottom right of the window, click on the gear icon to open the settings.
When the pop-up window displays, you’ll see a list of all apps using notifications on your Mac. Showing some apps in your Notification Center makes sense like Reminders, Calendar, Mail, and Messages. But there are others that you probably don’t need notifications for such as Safari, Photos, Books, or Home.
This is all completely up to you, of course. Just remember that the point of the Notifications View is to see those alerts most important to you.
Remove Apps from the Notifications View
As you click each app on the left, you’ll see its settings on the right. Keep in mind that these are all of the notification settings for the app, there are only a couple that apply to the Notification Center. So, while you may remove apps from the Notification Center, you can still receive other alert types.
Select an app that you’d like to remove and on the right uncheck the box for Show in Notification Center.
Sort Apps in the Notification Center
Along with the ability to remove apps from the Notification Center, you can decide how the alerts are sorted.
At the bottom of the settings window, select the drop-down box for the Notification Center sort order. You have three options for sorting your alerts.
Recents: Your notifications are sorted automatically according to the time they arrive with the most recent at the top.
Recents by App: Your notifications are grouped by app and the app with the most recent notification is automatically listed first.
Manually by App: Your notifications are grouped by app, similar to above, but are sorted by the order you select in the Notifications settings. Here’s how to use the Manually by App option.
Once you select that option for the sort order, you can move the apps in the list on the left.
Select the app you want to move.
Hold the app as you drag it to its new position.
When you see the line showing where the app will fall, release.
Now your apps will be sorted in your Notification Center in the order you want them.
Make the Notification Center Yours
With a few simple tweaks, you can have the Today and Notifications Views in the Notification Center show exactly what you want. It doesn’t take much time, isn’t a tedious task, and gives you the results that make the Notification Center work best for you.
Are you going to take a few minutes to customize your Mac Notification Center? Let us know how you like to arrange the views.
Sandy worked for many years in the IT industry as a project manager, department manager, and PMO Lead. She then decided to follow her dream and now writes about technology full-time. Sandy holds a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology.
She loves technology– specifically – terrific games and apps for iOS, software that makes your life easier, and productivity tools that you can use every day, in both work and home environments.
Her articles have regularly been featured at MakeUseOf, iDownloadBlog and many other leading tech publications.
The notifications in OS X are just broken and not implemented correctly. Modal popup windows that are forced to be in a single location……… Who codes this stuff? I would have never, never, put that out that way…
I want to remove apps from the Notifications preference and add some. How do I do that? For example I have two google chrome apps which is meaningless. I also want to remove the CNN breaking news app, How do I do that?
Open Notification Center (it’s the icon in the top right corner that looks like a list with bullet points.) Then, at the bottom of the Notifications pane, tap the gear icon (Settings) then go app by app and choose how you want or don’t want these app notifications to show.
If an app doesn’t appear here, that means it is not set-up for notifications on your Mac.
The notifications in OS X are just broken and not implemented correctly. Modal popup windows that are forced to be in a single location……… Who codes this stuff? I would have never, never, put that out that way…
I want to remove apps from the Notifications preference and add some. How do I do that? For example I have two google chrome apps which is meaningless. I also want to remove the CNN breaking news app, How do I do that?
Hi Al,
Open Notification Center (it’s the icon in the top right corner that looks like a list with bullet points.) Then, at the bottom of the Notifications pane, tap the gear icon (Settings) then go app by app and choose how you want or don’t want these app notifications to show.
If an app doesn’t appear here, that means it is not set-up for notifications on your Mac.