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 notification, wait for it, from that notification. After all, on mobile, you can swipe a notification to the side to access a settings option, and that brings you to the app’s notification interface, where you can customize which types of notifications the app can send. The choices vary by app, of course.

That’s not how Windows 11 works.

A notification banner in Windows 11–which will also appear in the Notifications panel if you ignore or miss it appearing live–has a little “Settings” (“…”) button in the upper-right. Clicking that will display two options: “Turn off all notifications for [app name]” and “Go to notification settings.”

I don’t want to turn off all OneDrive notifications. Maybe there’s a sync error or some other important issue to deal with. So “Go to notification settings” it is. This loads the notification settings for that app, as expected, in the Settings app (System > Notifications > [App name]). In the case of OneDrive, this is hilarious for two reasons. One, you cannot manually navigate to System > Notifications > OneDrive if you don’t see a notification from this app first, it doesn’t exist yet; but if you choose “Go to notification settings” from that banner, it does exist going forward. Two, this interface does not provide a way to turn off particular, app-specific notification types.

Instead, each app is responsible for its specific notifications and how or whether the user can toggle them on or off. For OneDrive, you have to open its internal settings interface (OneDrive tray icon > Help & Settings (gear icon) > Settings > Notifications). There, you will find a “Notify me when ‘On this day’ memories are available.” Which I then turn off. (I leave the other OneDrive notification types enabled.)

I know. This feels like a weird joke. And it is weird. It’s just not a joke.

Here’s another example that highlights how dumb this system is. This one is less common, but it’s even more perplexing.

Most of the review laptops I evaluate come with a 65-watt USB-C charger, and that means I can simply use whatever chargers I have around our home as I move from place to place each day. I leave a charger next to the bed, next to a seat in our living room, and so on. But one of the review units I just got came with a physically larger and beefier 100-watt charger. I didn’t think much of this, but as I was setting it up one night while watching TV, I figured I should power it while bulk-installing apps. So I plugged it in with the (65-watt) charger–made by the same company, by the way–that I have there. The following notification appeared.

This banner has the same “…” options as every other notification, but I was curious about that “Learn more” button. Would this open a Microsoft web page or one from the PC maker? As it turns out, it went to this rather pointless page on the Microsoft Support site. OK, whatever.

Two things about this notification.

One, it stays on-screen for a long time. It does eventually disappear, but it stays there longer than usual. Annoying.

And as with the OneDrive notification, I don’t want to turn off all Power & Battery notifications, for obvious reasons. But I also don’t need to be prompted going forward that this PC will charge a bit more slowly than it can when using a standard 65-watt charger. For whatever it’s worth, it works fine and seems to charge at what I would call a normal speed. I just want to turn off that notification. Having acknowledged the “issue,” I’m good.

But how?

Selecting the “Settings” (“…”) button in the banner and then “Go to notification settings” brings me to Settings > System > Notifications > Power & Battery, as expected. But it’s also useless, as I now expect, because I’ve visited a Settings page like this more times than I can count. And there’s no way to customize which notifications this system feature displays. Just whether they display at all and, if so, how.

Useless.

But maybe this works like OneDrive. Maybe one could navigate to System > Power & battery (love the inconsistent capitalization in Windows 11, by the way) and … I don’t know, customize … something.

Maybe. Anything is possible. But I couldn’t find that setting, or anything related to notifications that the Power & battery (or is it Power & Battery?) feature displays. Not one thing.

As it turns out, this setting does exist. But it’s not in Power & battery settings. It’s in System > Bluetooth & devices > USB. There, you can find an option, “Show a notification if this PC is charging slowly over USB.”

I know what some of you are thinking. That makes sense. But it doesn’t make sense. On multiple levels.

Most obviously, the notification banner clearly identifies the culprit as Power & Battery, not whatever you think Settings > Bluetooth & devices > USB should be called. But there’s another issue. I searched for this in the Settings app and it came up empty. I just didn’t use the magic phrase, proving that search in Windows 11 is still as unsophisticated as the parser in an Infocom text adventure from the early 1980s. If you type “Slow charger” into Settings search–you know, the fricking literal title of the notification, you get this.

But maybe I type too fast. If you just search for “slow,” you can find the answer.

Classic.

Some Windows 11 notifications are easier to deal with. Within the first day or two of using a new Windows 11 install, for example, a Suggestions banner notification will appear. And in keeping with my general strategy for notifications, I just disable that in-place at that time, and it never bothers me again.

But this system is unsophisticated, overall, and largely pointless. It’s annoying enough that I bet many will simply disable notifications entirely, which is counterproductive and inadvisable. But that’s what happens with bad design. And that’s what the notifications system in Windows 11 is, bad design. When you consider that the overall design of this system was informed and inspired by mobile platforms and our familiarity with them, it boggles the mind that Windows 11 doesn’t handle notifications better.

But that’s Windows for you. We get used to this type of nonsense, and Microsoft spins its wheels, moving the Copilot icon around the Taskbar and toggling the display of a notification bell next to the date/time and clock.

It’s a lot of movement. But little forward progress.