Website notifications have become very common these days, and while some are pretty useful, others only bombard you with prompts right after the site loads in the browser.

And Microsoft, who is now fully committed to making Microsoft Edge one of the best browsers around, says this is quite a problem, as notifications are an essential part of the browsing experience.

The software giant says it has reached out directly to users to figure out how to improve notifications in Microsoft Edge, and what it found out was that abusive prompts need to be blocked from the get-go.

“These users were typically bothered if they couldn’t understand the value of notifications from a given site, or if the prompt appeared immediately upon visiting the site. However, many of these same users want or even depend upon notifications from a site that’s important to them: for example, meeting alerts from a calendar web app or updates from their favorite media subscriptions,” Microsoft says.

This is why the most recent version of Microsoft Edge (version 84 available since mid-July on all supported platforms) introduces a new concept called quiet notification requests.

Also available in other Chromium browsers, this feature essentially blocks the flyout prompt that shows up on websites offering notifications.

Instead, you’re now getting a small bell icon in the address bar that indicates a website is offering notifications, so you can just click that icon to activate them.

Microsoft has enabled this feature for everyone updating to the latest version of the browser, simply because it wants to put users in control of notifications during their browsing experience.

“This treatment reduces the prominence of notification requests so the user can stay focused on their current task, but keeps the request at a noticeable location in the UI. If the user wants to subscribe to notifications, they can click the “Notifications blocked” bell icon and accept the request,” Microsoft says.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that blocking all notification requests from the very beginning is the right way to go, and Microsoft knows this very well. And it’s all because users still want to get notifications from specific websites and blocking them could actually mean missing on some prompts.

This is why the software giant is already working on improving the whole thing in the future versions of the browser.

“As we found in our user research, however, there are some scenarios where notification requests are particularly welcome and may warrant the full prompt. We’re currently exploring turning on the full flyout prompt when data suggests users find a given site’s notification request valuable. Users would be able to keep the quiet notification requests experience for all sites if they prefer. Stay tuned for updates!” the company says.

Additionally, Microsoft is also providing a series of tips for developers in order to make the notification experience less intrusive, and one of the bits of advice is to just avoid displaying the prompt once the site loads. In such cases, users don’t even know if enabling notifications is worth it or not, especially if this is the first time they are visiting the website.

All these changes are not exclusive to Windows 10 but are part of Microsoft Edge on all platforms where the browser is available. The migration to Chromium allowed Edge to become a cross-platform offering, so it’s now up for grabs on Windows 10 (where it’s also the new default browser after it replaced the legacy version of Edge), on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and macOS. A Linux version of Edge is also in the works, and it should go live as a preview by the end of the year.

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