How to Adjust and Change Notification Settings on Windows 10/11

Notifications are vital on Windows, as they display essential system and program information, so we want to ensure we can see them properly.

On the other hand, notifications we don’t want to receive can be annoying and intrusive. This is why it is crucial to know how to change notification settings on Windows.

In this article, I will show how to change each of these settings.

(If your Settings app is not opening on Windows 11, I’ve written an article on how to fix the Settings app not opening.)

How to Make Windows Notifications Bigger/Smaller:

If you use a bigger display (or if you have sight issues), you might find that the notification’s text is too small to read.

Or you may think your notifications are taking up too much space and want to make them smaller.

This is how you can change your Windows notification text size on Windows:

In Windows 10:

1. Enter Display on Windows Search and click on Display.
2. Under Make Text Bigger, drag the slider until the text is big/small enough.

This will only change the text size in your Windows 10; if you also want to increase or reduce the size of icons, apps, and everything else in general, do this instead:

1. Enter Display on Windows Search and click on Display.
2. Under Make Everything Bigger, go to Change the size of apps and text on the main display and drag the slider to change the size:
   

In Windows 11:

1. Enter Text Size on the Start Menu and select Make text size bigger:
   
2. Under Text Size Preview, drag the Text size slider until the text is big/small enough.

This will only increase or reduce the size of text on your Windows. To adjust the size of text, icons, apps, and everything in general, do this instead:

1. Enter Settings on Windows Search and click on Open:
   
2. Under System, select Display:
3. Under Scale & layout, go to Scale and change the size of your text, apps, icons, etc.:

How to Change Notification Time on Windows

Another way to optimize your notifications on Windows is by changing how long the notifications and alerts appear on your screen.

The default duration is 5 seconds and you can’t make it shorter than this, but you can extend the duration of the notification on Windows settings:

In Windows 10:

To change the notification time on Windows 10:

1. Enter Settings on Windows Search and click on Open.
2. Under settings, click on Ease of Access.
3. Under Display, scroll down to Show notifications for and select your preferred duration:

In Windows 11:

1. Enter Settings on Windows Search and click on Open.
2. Click on the hamburger menu on the top of the Settings windows, and select Accessibility:
3. Under Accessibility, select Visual Effects:
   
4. On Dismiss notifications after this amount of time, select your preferred duration:

As I said above, 5 seconds is already the shorter duration available. There is no way to make it briefer; however, you can still disable all or certain notifications on Windows 11.

How to Disable Notifications on Windows

Windows also allow you to disable notifications.

You can disable all notifications on your PC, including system and app ones, or you can also select to disable only specific notifications from apps you don’t want to hear about.

Here is how you can do it:

In Windows 10:

1. Open the Windows 10 Start Menu, select Settings, then click on System.
2. Find Notifications & actions on the left menu, then turn off Get notifications from apps and other senders.
   
3. Or scroll down Show notifications from these apps and turn off only the notifications from the apps you don’t want to receive notifications from.

You can click on each app to see more detailed options, such as disabling the notification sound or choosing how many notifications will show simultaneously.

In Windows 11:

1. Open the Windows 11 Start Menu and select Settings.
2. Under System, select Notifications:
   
3. Under Notifications, go to Notifications and turn it off to disable all Windows notifications:
4. Or scroll down to Notifications from apps and other senders, and turn off only the notifications from certain apps.

You have the option to click on each app to see more detailed options, such as choosing its priority, if the notification will play a sound, and more.

How to Turn Off Lock Screen Notifications on Windows

It is also possible to disable only the lock screen notifications, and you can turn off all the lock screen notifications or only certain app notifications.

In Windows 10:

1. Open the Windows 10 Start Menu, select Settings, then click on System.
2. Find Notifications & actions on the left menu. Under Notifications turn off Show notifications on lock screen.3. Or scroll down to Show notifications from these apps, click on a certain app and turn off show notifications on the lock screen.

In Windows 11:

1. Open the Windows 11 Start Menu and select Settings.
2. Under System, select Notifications.
3. Under Notifications, click on Notifications to expand it.
4. Uncheck Show notifications on the lock screen to turn off all lock screen notifications.
5. Or scroll down to Notifications from apps and other senders, click on the desired app and turn off only lock screen notifications of one or some apps.

How to Fix Notifications Not Working on Windows 10/11

This happens probably due to having corrupted files on your system, you can fix this easily by using the DISM and the sfc /scannow tools on Command Prompt:

1. Enter Command Prompt on Windows Search and click on Run as Administrator:
   
2. In the Command Prompt, run the DISM command below:
   DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
   
   For the DISM tool to work it is important that your Windows Update client is working and that you are connected online.
3. After that, run the following command:
   sfc /scannow
   
   As stated by Microsoft, this will “scan all protected system files, and replace corrupted files with a cached copy that is located in a compressed folder” on your PC
4. Restart your PC.

Conclusion

You can choose not only to enable or disable notifications but also select which notifications you want to receive, how long they will keep on-screen, and if they will appear on lock-screen, along with other options.

Changing notification settings is only one of the ways to optimize Windows. If you want to keep improving your Windows experience, check this article to learn how to make Windows search faster.

Or learn how clean your PC fast by learning how to uninstall multiple programs at once in Windows.