Like video chatting, screen sharing is now a required tool for anyone working or socializing from home. Unfortunately, sharing your device’s screen can be a privacy risk (or just plain embarrassing) if you don’t take precautions against accidental sharing too much. To help reduce that risk, Google is testing a new feature that mutes Chrome notifications while sharing a Chrome window so that your browser cannot air your laundry without warning.
While Google Meet already automatically mutes Chrome notifications, the new Chrome feature works with screen sharing applications such as Messenger, Discord, Microsoft Teams and Zoom on desktop and mobile. Enabling this will prevent Chrome from sharing notification details with your audience and keep your presentations professional and without distraction.
Instead of notifications being turned off all the time, they are only muted while you’re sharing the screen. They are not ignored or thrown away. When you’re done sharing, you can see everything you’ve missed in Gmail, Drive, and third-party websites that send you notifications via Chrome.
G / O Media can receive a commission
Eventually, mute notifications will be available to all Google accounts (including general users, Google Workspace, and G Suite enterprise users) through the stable Chrome channel, but you can now try an early version in Chrome Canary. Chrome Canary is used to test unfinished functions and settings, so it is prone to stability bugs and crashes, but you should use this version if you want to mute Chrome notifications during your presentations. You can try it out like this:
- Download Chrome Canary for your device.
- Open the browser and go to chrome: // flags / # mute-notifications-during-screen sharing.
- Select “Switch” from the drop-down menu.
- Restart Chrome Canary to apply the changes.
When the setting is on, Chrome will hide all details of incoming notifications during screen sharing. The notification will still show up on the screen with the Chrome icon, but it just says ‘content is hidden while sharing your screen’. Select “Close to” to hide the popup. There is also an option for it “Show all” if you want all notification information to be displayed. Otherwise, hidden information is only visible after you stop screen sharing.
If you don’t want to download Chrome Canary, but still need a way to mute notifications, or you never want to see each Chrome warnings altogether: you can turn them off in Chrome’s settings by going to Settings> Privacy and Security> Site Settings> Permissions> Notifications.
[Android Police]