Microsoft Edge uses crowdsourcing data to show or hide notification requests

Microsoft is trying a new solution for the persistent “do you want to allow notifications from this website” requests that you see on the Internet: crowdsourcing data that people block and allow. Microsoft calls this feature adaptive notification requests, according to a blog post published today, and the company is rolling out it in Edge 88 after receiving positive feedback from testers.

For an example of how this works, let’s say there’s a website that usually asks for notifications and no one wants them. They either ignore the request or hit the block button to make sure they never see it again. Microsoft then collects this data and will stop showing new users the notification request in the future.

In previous versions, Edge made notification requests “silent” by default, which meant they were automatically blocked and appeared as a bell icon in the address bar where users could. click to activate them. In the blog post, Microsoft states that this fixed the problem. user complaints about getting too many requests, but introduced new issues: mainly, people stopped turning on notifications altogether, even on sites where many users turned them on.

Image: Microsoft

The new version seeks to strike a balance between showing notification requests from users that they may actually want and hiding those they don’t want – those that don’t make the cut will automatically be “calmed down.”

Microsoft doesn’t leave users who never want to receive requests (like me) out in the cold, however: you can re-enable silent notification requests by going to Settings, Cookies and Site Permissions, then Notifications to re-enable them. Microsoft will also automatically turn on silent notifications if you click “block” on three notification requests in a row. Edge will also automatically block notifications from a site if a user rejects a request with the X button three times in a row or ignores it by clicking elsewhere on the page four times in a row.

If you are not using Edge but are At the limit of all notification requests, we have a guide on how to turn them off in all major browsers. However, it would be nice to see Chrome and others adopt a feature similar to this, where notification requests that are spammy and annoying are hidden, but really useful requests (like, for example, for Gmail) are shown. to users.