Microsoft Edge Now Uses Adaptive Notifications

After quieting all website notifications by default in Edge, Microsoft discovered that many users couldn’t find notification requests anymore. So Microsoft has switched to a new system it calls adaptive notifications.

“Notifications can be a powerful tool to help users engage with sites that they want to remain connected with,” the Microsoft Edge team writes in a new post. “We always want to be grounded in what’s best for our customers and conflicting signals told us that we needed to find a better balance between the full prompt and quiet requests.”

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The full notification prompt experience

To determine whether to display the old full prompt and the newer quieter prompt—which appears as a subtle bell icon in the Edge address bar—Microsoft has created a scoring system that represents the level of annoyance that the full prompt triggers on any given site. The more users who click “Block” on these notifications, the higher the negative signal and the higher the score, while those who click “Allow” will lead to a lower and more positive score.

The adaptive notification prompt experience

For now, Microsoft is experimenting with this feature in the current stable version of Edge, and it says that it will “fine-tune the most effective score threshold that addresses user feedback about the balance between easily subscribing to the desired notifications and the annoyance of unwanted notification requests.”

Those who don’t want the adaptive notifications experience can simply disable them with a new “Quiet notification requests” option in Edge settings, which can be found at Cookies and site permissions > Notifications.) And anyone who block 3 consecutive notification requests will implicitly enable this option as well.

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Conversation 4 comments

  • sherlockholmes

    Premium Member
    16 February, 2021 - 11:01 pm

    <p>I still have a weird outlook problem. It can only keep me locked in on one PC and browser. When Im synced with a second PC or laptop, it locks me out everytime I close it. Very strange. </p>

  • codymesh

    17 February, 2021 - 2:24 am

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">These notification prompts are so annoying, it's almost as bad as the pop-up problem in the 90's. These prompts should have never allowed developers to call on them automatically without user input</span></p>

    • behindmyscreen

      17 February, 2021 - 9:32 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#613707">In reply to codymesh:</a></em></blockquote><p>Or at least only prompt if the user installs the web app to their device.</p>

  • matapillar

    17 February, 2021 - 7:02 am

    <p>Basically, every client PC I set up nowadays has notifications turned OFF, regardless of the browser they use. Most clients preferred it that way after informally trialling and asking for feedback. The fact is, those notifications are all too often spammed by false antivirus messages and false news adverts.</p>

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