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Ask HN: Are browser notifications user-hostile?

38 points by tzakrajs ↗ HN
Allow me to apologize for my leading questions in advance, but I am looking for arguments for and against the title topic.

What percentage of the time do you accept notification requests? How often was it on purpose? How often do you deny them? Does this feature feel like it is abused?

50 comments

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coreyp_1
I always deny them. I have only ever seen clickbait sites use them, and I do not trust them to not abuse the system.
noncoml
They are useful IMHO, but I only allow 1 or 2.

Maybe one for emails and one for my chess games. All the rest denied.

mikestew
Whatever the setting is for “don’t you EVER pop a browser-originated notification. Don’t even ASK.” in macOS, I have that turned on.
jsjohnst
I so wish I knew what that setting was. Guess I could’ve googled it in the time I’ve written this reply.
mikestew
sigh You're going to exploit my alpha geek to make me go look and prove I know how to do it, aren't you? :-)

System Preferences/Notifications/Safari. There's a None option. Then Safari/Preferences/Notifications/Uncheck "Allow websites to ask for permission..." IIRC, I've not seen any mention of notifications in Safari since.

jsjohnst
Just toggled off the “allow websites to ask for permission...” setting in Safari/Preferences/Websites/Notifications. Thanks! Lazy web for the win!
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ramphastidae
In Firefox: go to about:config and set dom.webnotifications.enabled to false.
jedanbik
I have never accepted one. If I wanted to read something regularly, I’d bookmark it and revisit it. Or subscribe to the RSS feed if I wanted to keep up to date.

To me, it’s just as annoying as apps with notifications, or websites with pop ups about newsletters. All of these things are generally just things trying to add more noise into my life.

I value my quiet. Are you offering more value than my quiet?

jsjohnst
I’ve never accepted a notification request for any site. The only sites it might be useful for to me, I already use a SSB (aka Mailplane) that’s built for that site, so no need.

In the same vein, I absolutely hate the “requests your current location” notifications too. There’s basically only one or two sites I’ve allowed it.

starik36
There is only one that I've ever accepted. It's from Remote Messages jailbreak app that let's send and receive SMSs & iMessages from your PC on the iPhone.
na85
I deny notification requests 100% of the time.
kelnos
I allow for chat webapps and GCalendar, and deny for everything else, even email. I don't trust any other site not to abuse them, and even if I did, there isn't anything else that would warrant an immediate interruption.

Now, if you're looking for arguments whether or not you should implement them for a user-facing webapp based on a sampling of HN readers' behavior, my guess is we're not really all that representative. If you think any of your users might find them useful, go ahead and implement them.

One caveat, though: most (all?) random websites that want to give me notifications do so by just brazenly requesting permission from the browser. I would prefer if there was a link/button on the website itself that I could use to opt-in (which would trigger the permissions dialog). It just feels sketchy when random websites request notification access (or location access, for that matter), without first presenting me a case for why they want it.

taneq
For me it's a natural extension of my antiphishing/antiscam/antiadvertising responses. If a web site pops up a thing demanding access to a resource (credentials/credulity/attention) the response is automatically no.
Itaxpica
Google Calendar is the only one I’ve ever allowed, or would allow.

It’s beyond user-hostile, it’s a pretty strong signal of a low-quality site at this point.

ramphastidae
I deny them 100% of the time (with one forthcoming exception). It's always spammy or click-bait sites that ask permission for push notifications, for no other reason than to push their content even more.

The only time I enabled them was when using the browser-based versions of Hipchat (and then Slack), as receiving notifications about incoming messages was actually useful to me.

balladeer
Citi bank (India) asks all the time, so does almost every Google web app. Some other offenders are ones like movie/event booking site like BookMyShow. But BMS are such shady spammers that I had to create specific filters to receive only booking confirmation in my mailbox. I had created <my email id>+bms@gmail.com and the next day my spam label count was in triple digit. ICICI Bank does, HSBC India does and I would like to add that these two are excellent spammers too. I suspect HSVC India's "unsubscribe" link results in an response "LOL" internally, or it just points to a static content that just shows "Successfully unsubscribed".

Anyway, the only time I need notification is when I am chatting with tech/customer support and I move to other tabs/windows in between.

I guess pretty much all the sites are inching towards being spammy and click-bait now, at least the ones of major companies.

m_eiman
I have disabled the feature completely in Firefox.
grayrest
I accept them if I knew exactly what it was used for (chat, calendar, conference) but the random ones around the net are 100% deny.
CSDude
People invented pop-up blockers for a reason, browser notifications are only used by intrusive spammy web-sites, similar to old pop-ups that wants to sell you Viagra or claiming you are the 1 millionth user. I only allow work related ones, like Gitlab or Slack.
pubb
Notifications can be useful for web apps. A good rule of thumb is to only ask for permission when the user interacts with your app. For example, I ask for permission when the user clicks a button with the text "Enable Push Notifications" on the user settings screen. Then I let the user choose what kind of notifications they'd like to receive - typically CRUD actions for entities that the user cares about.
JoshTriplett
> A good rule of thumb is to only ask for permission when the user interacts with your app. For example, I ask for permission when the user clicks a button with the text "Enable Push Notifications" on the user settings screen.

This is absolutely the right way to do it. A little unobtrusive in-page suggestion to enable notifications is not a problem; I've enabled them for Slack via such a notification, for instance. But I'm never going to grant a site notification permission if it pops up the browser permission dialog without interaction.

gpm
I've purposely enabled them for my works slack, and they have been extremely convenient there.

I have intentionally denied them on every other website that asked, not many have asked.

I'm glad they exist. Currently they don't seem to be widely abused. If they become widely abused a "default to silently deny" policy would handle any user-hostility.

gpvos
It's interesting: even though indeed there are not so many sites that ask for them, I still find it an intrusion every time. I suppose it's a kind of conditioning because of all the spamming.
conductr
I accept them 0% of the time. Always on purpose. 100%. Yes I’ve never once seen a “allow notifications because some actual benefit”. It’s always just forced pop up with no elaboration of why I might actually care to give this permission. It’s usually also pops up the first time I visit a site. Why on earth do I want to sign up for the “new blog post” notifications before I even know if I like this blog. It actually immediately discredits your site in my opinion.

I can imagine a responsible implementation Like others are explaining here but have never seen it in the wild myself.

proginthebox
I deny them 100% time. Almost all websites seem to ask them nowadays. However, very few websites seem to ask once I have denied it permanently.
croisillon
Another data point for 100% denial here, my gf authorized one for the local newspaper (she's also an avid newsletter subscriber)
robin_reala
100% of the time, with a single exception yesterday for an Apple support chat window I had open among a bunch of other ones on a laptop without an external screen. There are a few exceptions where thry’re worthwhile but it needs to be part of a focused experience.
kccqzy
Always deny except for Slack.

I don’t even enable notifications for most apps on my desktop or on my phone. There are enough distractions in modern life already.

bostik
0%, no exceptions.

Any website that asks for them gets immediately flagged as an entitled piece of s--t.

teekert
I like it that Nextcloud and protonmail have them. Other than that I find them extremely annoying. Its like a twitter friend request just to send you adds, I have never accepted any of them.
TeMPOraL
Another point for 100% deny. Not just because of annoyance, but also in order not to have stuff running in the background when my browser is not open.

Hell, I'm actually tuning down in-app notifications as well, especially on chats. I've learned that notifications are distracting, and 99% of time not worth the cost of interruption. I had to get over my FOMO for that, but it's been worth it.

jacquesm
Never accepted on, blocked this in browser settings, I've only seen it abused. It's roughly at the same level of irritation as follow up spam, asking the browser to set the page visited as your home page and spam asking for read confirmation.
aorth
I have never accepted a notifications request ever. Now, because of this thread, I've learned how to disable the feature entirely in Firefox (set dom.webnotifications.enabled to false).