Microsoft Edge is collecting data to show or hide notification requests

Microsoft is trying a new solution to the persistent ‘do you want to allow notifications from this site’ that you see on the Internet: Crowdsourcing data about which people are blocking and which they are allowing. According to a blog post today, Microsoft calls this feature customizable notification requests, and the company launches it in Edge 88 after receiving positive feedback from testers.

For an example of how it works, say there is a website that regularly asks for notifications and no one wants it. They will ignore the request or click on the block button to make sure they never see it again. Microsoft then collects that data and will in the future stop showing the notification request to new users.

In previous versions, Edge “silenced” notification requests by default, which meant that it would be automatically blocked and would appear as a call icon in the address bar that users could click to sign in to. In the blog post, Microsoft says that it has been complaining to users about the fact that they received too many of the requests, but introduced new problems: mainly people stopped turning on notifications completely, even on websites where many users used to enabled.

Image: Microsoft

The new version is looking for a balance between editing notification requests to users they might want and hiding those they do not want to do – those who do not make the cut are automatically ‘silenced’.

However, Microsoft leaves users who never want to receive the requests (like me) in the cold: you can re-enable silent notification requests by going to Settings, Cookies and Site Permissions and then notifications to re-enable them. Microsoft will also turn on Silent notifications automatically when you click “block” on three notification requests in a row. Edge will also automatically block notifications from a website if a user rejects a request with the X button three times in a row or ignores it by clicking four times in a row elsewhere on the page.

If you do not use Edge is aware of all the notification requests, we have a guide to disable them in all major browsers. However, it would be nice to see Chrome and others accept a similar feature, where spam and annoying notification requests are hidden but shown to be genuinely useful (such as for Gmail) users.