Microsoft may reduce ‘unwanted’ notifications on Windows 11, here’s how – Times of India

Microsoft has recently announced that Windows 10 will reach the end of its life cycle on October 14, 2025. With this announcement, the tech giant is pushing users to adopt its latest Windows operating system, Windows 11. However, it has an ‘unwanted notifications’ problem. Windows 11 depends hugely on push notifications from both first and third-party apps and websites. Almost every app on Windows 11 tries to send unnecessary notifications which can be annoying for users.
For example, after running every security check on the system, even the Windows Security app regularly sends notifications. Apart from this, the Weather app, websites subscribed on web browsers and other apps also send notifications which can be frustrating for users.
How Microsoft is planning to cut down on ‘unwanted’ notifications
to reduce the number of daily alerts received by users, Microsoft has already introduced some changes to the Windows OS. For example, Windows 11 includes a feature called “Focus Assist”, which allows users to focus on specific tasks. The feature cuts down on multiple distractions, which include toast notifications from apps like Outlook, Edge, etc.
According to a report by WindowsLatest, the tech giant is now trying a new way to reduce notifications spam for users to focus on the important ones. References spotted in Windows 11 preview builds suggest that the company is testing a new feature called “Smart opt-out” that is expected to further reduce the notifications spam in Windows.
What is Smart opt-out and how will it work
The report claims that this feature will recommend users about disabling notifications from apps that users do not regularly interact with. For example, if a user hasn’t opened an app for a month, this feature will send an alert asking to turn off notifications from the particular app. Users will also get the option to disable notifications from the app or to keep it the way it was.

This feature is expected to improve the user experience on Windows. Moreover, email filters have also used a similar approach for a long time. It will be able to detect ignored notifications and suggest disabling them automatically. However, this feature won’t affect notifications from apps that are accessed regularly. As per the report, Smart opt-out will be a minor addition to the operating system, so it is expected to arrive in a few months via Windows 11’s new configuration updates.
Other notification-related features
Windows 11 is also likely to get another notification-related update that will offer users more control over high-priority notifications from both first and third-party apps. With this feature, urgent notifications will be able to bypass the Focus Assist (Do Not Disturb) settings.
Apps that need to send urgent notifications will send an alert titled, “Allow important notifications”. This will allow users to get high-priority notifications from a specific app even when Focus Assist is enabled. Microsoft may also add a new control called, “view notification,” with the urgent notifications feature. To improve privacy, this option will help users to view the content of the notification while using full-screen apps.