Ask HN: Are browser notifications user-hostile? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are browser notifications user-hostile?

38 pointstzakrajs49 comments

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?

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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.

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.

The main problem is that the request to allow notifications pops up the first time you visit a site, at a time when you have no idea yet how much you like and trust the site. This leads me to always permanently deny them (because the second and third time I visit the site, I am still unlikely to know them well enough, so the popups would just be annoying). Then, after that, the notifications have been permanently denied, and you don't get a chance to re-enable them anymore.

So sites should never ask to enable notifications by default, but instead have an easy-to-find-but-not-too-obnoxious button on the homepage to later enable them. (I don't even know if this is technically possible at the moment.) I would still do this for <1% of sites, but at least the functionality would be useful and usable. A Javascript pop-up div in a corner might be acceptable when you visit the site for the 5th time or so.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

I so wish I knew what that setting was. Guess I could’ve googled it in the time I’ve written this reply.

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.

Just toggled off the “allow websites to ask for permission...” setting in Safari/Preferences/Websites/Notifications. Thanks! Lazy web for the win!

In Firefox: go to about:config and set dom.webnotifications.enabled to false.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Pretty much. I only accept them for about 4 sites in total. Anything else, I can't imagine any reason I would accept notifications from them. As far as I'm concerned, "if you want me to see your content in a timely fashion, publish an RSS feed and if I like your site I'll subscribe". This intrusive browser notification stuff is lame.

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.

I'm surprised at all the absolutes here. I agree with people on blogs and news sites and things like that. Notifications are an awful thing. I immediately think less of ablog if it tries to get me to enable them.

However, for web apps like calendars and project management and chat they are indispensable. I'm not going to go and check (polling style) my project management software 80 times a day. Which means that if one of my team needs my eye on something the notification makes sue it gets looked at much sooner.

My notification popup from Google Calendar has saved my ass many times because it alerted me to an appointment I forgot I had.

My personal UI pattern that I like is to put a notification option in the settings area and only turn it on (show the prompt to turn it on) when they specifically ask.

I allow them for a very small and selective number of sites that I mostly trust. For me this is a pretty high bar. I have three sites whitelisted right now.

Conditions to be whitelisted:

1) I have been using your site for years.

2) Your site has timely important information in my specific field of interest.

3) Your site doesn't engage in monetization practices that lead to a poor user experience (ads that pop over or otherwise interrupt the articles, self-playing audio, self-resizing ads, begging for account creation, etc.)

4) Of all the existing sites on this topic, yours needs to be the best one (proven with many years track record).

Has your site been around for many years?

99.99% of the time I would deny them and consider even the request to be a rude annoyance. If your site is not in the top 1% of long-established quality sites, you shouldn't even request the permission imho.

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.

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.

I disable all notifications in all programs, browsers and also those generated by the OS.

The whole idea of notifications is that I want to be interrupted from whatever I'm doing to learn the information in a timely manner. This is pretty much never true.

Same here. Especially with screen-sharing or pair work. Receiving some NSFW language IM notifications from chaty coworker is absolutely embarrasing. Just simple dot indicator on a tray icon is enough to remind me to check later.

0%, no exceptions.

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

I deny them all, I also turn off most notifications from programs on my PC and on my phone. My email clients, direct messages on HipChat and some facebook notifications on my phone (and phone calls and SMS) are the only notifications I want. I like to be in charge of when to consume information, instead of being force feed information.

So except HipChat at work I get less than 10 notifications a day in total on all platforms. Most can be looked at when I notice them, and closed right away. Still keep them on for the 1 in 10 that I want to read.

I allow a couple, namely Google Calendar and Remember the Milk (which I use for work, sort of). I don't mind being asked if I'd like to enable them - if I don't want something to notify me I just hit "no". I get that some people would find that annoying though, especially if you're more of a prolific reader than I.

I accept them for a few messaging apps, where they're truly useful enough that it balances out the inconvenience of saying no to the many sites that have no business asking.

I think browsers would do well to let users whitelist some sites and pretend to all others that the capability isn't available.

I always deny them. I have only ever seen clickbait sites use them, and I do not trust them to not abuse the system.

I've never actually seen one, I deny all of them, because I've never thought to myself, that they could possibly be useful.

To me, They are an annoyance. I become suspicious of any site wanting me to accept them.

I would disable this feature globally if I could (or cared enough to figure out how.)

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.

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.

Deny them all because they tend to be obtrusive and when I did allow a select few, they were frequently of little value or importance. Since denying them all I get more done and am not subjected to frequent interruptions.

The only ones I allow are from my irc client (Glowing Bear) and Slack. I really don't like the current UI, I wish it was less intrusive, like the "allow popups" UI in browsers.

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.

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.

I allow them for Slack and Gmail. That's it.

If you have a news/entertainment/social media site that ask for notifications, I immediately see your site as spammy.

They are good for game sites like lichess

Wait until these websites start implementing service workers which don't require the webpage in question to be open

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.

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.

I have disabled the feature completely in Firefox.

Another data point for 100% denial here, my gf authorized one for the local newspaper (she's also an avid newsletter subscriber)

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.

Yes! Don't even ask unless you're WhatsApp web. Actually the browser should auto-deny all requests.

I think it's a great feature but I should be the one asking for notifications not them.

I deny notification requests 100% of the time.

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