Like video chat, screen sharing is now a must-have tool for anyone working or socializing from home. Unfortunately, sharing your device’s screen can be a risk of privacy – or simply embarrassing – if you don’t take precautions against accidents over-sharing. To help reduce this risk, Google is testing a new feature that disables Chrome notifications while sharing a Chrome window, so your browser cannot ventilate your dirty laundry without warning.
While Google Meet is already disabling Chrome notifications, the new Chrome feature works with screen sharing apps such as Messenger, Discord, Microsoft Teams, and desktop and mobile Zoom. Enabling it prevents Chrome from sharing notification details with your audience and can help you keep your presentations professional and not distract you.
Instead of turning off notifications all the time, this only turns them off while you’re sharing your screen – they’re not ignored or removed. Once you’re done sharing, you’ll be able to view anything you’ve lost from Gmail, Drive, and any third-party websites that send you notifications via Chrome.
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Finally, the notification disabling option will be available for all Google Accounts – including general users, Google Workspace, and G Suite users – through the stable Chrome channel, but you can try an earlier version in Chrome Canary right now. Chrome Canary is used to test unfinished features and settings, so it’s prone to stability errors and crashes, but you’ll need to use this version if you want to turn off Chrome notifications during presentations. Here’s how to try:
- Download Chrome Canary for your device
- Open the browser, then log in chrome: // flags / # mute-notifications-during-screen-share.
- Select “Enable” from the drop-down menu.
- Restart Chrome Canary to apply the changes.
With the setting enabled, Chrome hides all details from notifications received during screen sharing. The notification still appears on the screen with the Chrome icon, but it will simply say “the content is hidden while you share the screen”. Select “Hang up” to hide the pop-up window. There is also an option to “Show all” if you want to allow all notification information to be displayed. Otherwise, the hidden information is only visible after you stop sharing the screen.
If you don’t want to download Chrome Canary, but still need a way to turn off notifications – or you never want to see anything Chrome alerts not at all – you can turn them off in Chrome settings by accessing Settings> Privacy and security> Site settings> Permissions> Notifications.
[Android Police]