Windows 11 Puts the Not in Notifications (Premium)

I have toxic relationships with notifications on all my devices, but Windows 11 is, by far, the worst. This isn't rocket science, Microsoft. Come on.

I can at least admit that I'm part of the problem. I have little to no patience on the best of days. And I cannot handle being interrupted when I'm trying to get something done. If you want to send me spiraling, just be part of a group chat that's making my phone ping every two seconds. That's when rage enters the picture.

My strategy for dealing with notifications is not ideal. I set up a new PC, smartphone, or other device. And then, as the notifications start annoying me, I turn them off. One by one. The problem, of course, is that I set up a lot of new devices. And so I repeat this cycle again and again. My impatience and anger grows, I finally reach a point of equilibrium with whatever device, and then it's on to the next one. Fantastic.

This past weekend, I set up three new review PCs, and I'll start writing those up soon. This experience was a sad reminder of how pointless most notifications are in Windows 11. And also of why I don't turn off notifications entirely. After all, some of these notifications are important.

The notification that irritates me the most comes from OneDrive.

I use OneDrive on my PCs for cloud storage and sync, and though I have switched to Google Drive for most day-to-day work--books, articles for this site, the YouTube stuff, and so on--I still use OneDrive. So I can't uninstall it or whatever. I just have to deal with it.

One of the things I have to deal with, with OneDrive, is it auto-enabling Folder backup after asking me and being denied. This usually happens within the first couple of days, and it follows a now-familiar pattern. OneDrive does its initial sync of my 850+ GB of data by updating its placeholders locally. It tells me, via a blue "bang" on its system tray icon, that my privacy settings have changed (on every single PC, though nothing has ever changed). It prompts me to enable backup, as it calls it, just as it did already during initial setup. It prompts me, again, to "backup" in the Settings app. And after I've said no enough times, it just enables Folder backup. Because Microsoft is terrible. So I open OneDrive, reverse that change I specifically said no to multiple times, and then I delete all the shortcuts it creates in Desktop, Documents, and Pictures when I do that. And seriously, OneDrive.

But there is one more OneDrive irritant I deal with on every PC. The day after setting up a new PC, a banner notification appears from OneDrive. It's called "Look back at your memories" or "On this day," and it shows me a thumbnail of a photo that was taken on this day but in a different year. And this is exactly the type of thing I like to see. On my phone. It is exactly the type of thing I do not want to see, on my PC. So I want to turn off these notifications.

One would assume--incorrectly--that you could disable this...