How to Use Notification Center on a Mac

Apple’s macOS provides notifications that display in the top right corner of the screen. These can be new emails, appointment reminders, task reminders, and app-specific notifications. If you don’t immediately respond to a notification, it hides but doesn’t completely disappear.

Notification Center provides quick access to these active notifications, along with a customizable collection of handy widgets. Using Notification Center to manage notifications and use widgets is quick and easy.

Open and close Notification Center

There are two methods to open and close Notification Center.

Step 1: To open the notification center, select the Time and date section of the menu bar or use a two-finger swipe gesture from the right side of the touchpad.

2nd step: To close the notification center, select the Time and date section or use a two-finger swipe gesture to the right side of the touchpad.

Manage notifications in Notification Center

You can perform several actions on notifications in Notification Center.

Step 1: As notifications arrive and are not acted upon, they accumulate in Notification Center in stacks by app. To see all notifications in a stack, just select the top notification.

2nd step: Select Show less to return a notification stack to its collapsed state. To completely close a stack of notifications, hover over the X button and select Erase everything.

Step 3: It is possible to control the notification settings of an application from the notification center. If a notification has a “>” in the upper right corner, select it, then select the triple dots menu button. In the example below, you can turn off the notification for an hour or an entire day, or turn off notifications completely.

Manage Widgets in Notification Center

Widgets make Notification Center even more fun and useful. It is quite easy to manage your widgets.

Step 1: You can manage an active widget by pressing the *Control* key and clicking the widget with your mouse or trackpad to select it. In the menu that appears, you can select a different size, edit widget properties, delete the widget, or edit all active widgets.

2nd step: If you select Edit Widgetsyou will be presented with a screen that allows you to remove widgets, add new widgets, and rearrange active widgets.

Want to add even more to your notification stack? Here are some of the best chat apps for Windows and MacOS.

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