Here’s a question we received the other day:
“At our work group we use Zoom to communicate with colleagues and customers on a daily basis. We mainly use audio and video meetings, but also team channels and one to one chats. The problem is that now, several months into active Zoom usage, i receive a huge amount of desktop alerts and sounds every day. That is quite annoying as it impacts my ability to focus. It is also a bummer specially when i participate in video meetings. Is there some magic setting that i can use to automatically mute these annoying banners from Zoom which pop up in the bottom right hand side of my Windows desktop ? Don’t know if it helps, but i am on Windows 10; but if you can provide some pointers for MAC i believe i can manage as well. Any help is very appreciated.”
Turn off all Zoom Chat push notifications
Here’s how to easily mute all incoming alerts from Zoom chats:
- Open Zoom.
- Hit your Zoom icon in the top-right side of your screen.
- Next, go ahead and hit Settings.
- Now navigate to the Chat Tab.
- Next, scroll down to the Push Notifications section
- Here you have two helpful choices
- Mark Nothing to dismiss all Zoom chat messages immediately.
- Or alternatively mark Only private mentions, to hide all notifications coming from Zoom channels, and receive only those from 1:1 chats.
Note: If you would like to stop alerts from noisy Zoom channels, but you want to keep receiving notifications from others, you can define exceptions by hitting the Channels… button. More on that in the next section.
Mute Zoom Group alerts
To disable group notifications in Zoom, proceed as following:
- In the Settings dialog, navigate to the Chat tab
- Then in the Push Notifications section, hit the Channels… button.
- Now define the notification level for each of your groups.
- Once done, hit Save.
Note that you’ll need to define the setting for each of the channels you are a member of. Use the procedure outlined above to dismiss all alerts in one shot.
Disable push notifications in Zoom
An alternative way to regulate the noise level from each group is available from the Chats section in Zoom.
- In the Chats application, navigate to the relevant Channel (in the case below, that’s Test).
- Hit the arrow next to your Channel Name
- Then hit Notifications.
- Then select the required messaging setting.
Note: You can also stop all channel alerting by using the meet Channel command.
Dismiss desktop notifications during Zoom meetings
We were also asked how to avoid desktop alerts during Zoom meetings. There is a little know switch that does this trick:
- Open the Zoom Settings (hit your user icon in the top right side of the Zoom app).
- Then select Chats.
- Scroll down and ensure that the Mute notifications while… is checked.
Note: Zoom settings are pretty consistent for the different platforms, so everything we explained is completely relevant if you are using the macOS, iOs or Android Zoom app.