At best, the Chrome Notification Center was a feature that you weren’t even aware of, at worst, it was an annoying popup that you’d much rather not have to deal with. Obviously, this is a sign that the feature should be removed, and though it’s taken Google two years to realize this, the company has finally decided to kill the Notification Center off. The feature will be removes for Linux, Mac, and Windows users in the upcoming Chrome update.
Google will soon make a significant change to Chrome—one that you probably won’t notice. On Wednesday, Google announced that an upcoming Chrome release will remove the notification center in Windows, Mac, and Linux. The notification center will remain in Chrome OS, however. If you don’t know what Chrome’s notification center is, open Chrome on Windows and then click the upward facing arrow on the far right of the taskbar. See that little bell icon? That’s notification center. If you click the bell icon, you’ll see something similar to what’s pictured here with notifications from Google Now, as well as Chrome apps and extensions. The notification center can also provide toast pop-up notifications alerting you to new email, a Hangouts message, and so on, similar to the Action Center in Windows 10. The feature first rolled out in 2013. Google decided to kibosh the notification center for several reasons, chief among them the simple fact that not enough people were using it. Also, Notification Center was Google’s attempt to solve a problem that lacked a standardized solution. Now, however, native push notifications for websites is going mainstream, so removing the notification center will simplify the development process for website creators.
