Tip: Turn Off Web-Based Skype Notifications
- Paul Thurrott
- Jan 13, 2017
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For the past few months, I’ve complained about the inability to disable Skype notification sounds in Microsoft’s websites. We’ll they’ve fixed that, and in doing so, they may have just saved my sanity as well.
I turn off Skype notification sounds everywhere because I find them superfluous and annoying. But when Microsoft added the latest, plug-in-free version of its Skype pane to Outlook.com, OneDrive.com and its other websites, it left off a crucial feature: The inability to disable Skype notifications.
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What that means to me is that I cannot leave Outlook.com, OneDrive and other Microsoft websites open in browser tabs because every time someone converses with me, the web browser will emit a loud “blatt” notification. (And it really is a terrible sound.)
OK, that sounds like a minor annoyance. But it leads to a bigger problem: I also cannot use Outlook.com as my primarily email address as a result, too, because I prefer to use web clients. If that thing was open all day, it would drive me crazy.
Today, amazingly, Microsoft fixed this.
To disable Skype notification sounds, open Outlook.com or OneDrive in your web browser, click the Skype button at the top (the one with a messaging-type icon), and then click the Settings cog at the bottom. In the Settings pane that appears, select Notifications (it’s the default). You’ll see a new option here, called “Sound: Turn notification sounds on or off.” Just turn ’em off.
I believe that this change is persistent (to your account) and that changing it once will change it across multiple Microsoft sites, but I’m waiting to hear back. (That means it works across browsers and PCs, too.)
Seriously, Microsoft. Thank you.