How to Hide Notifications During Screen Sharing

You are presenting to a client. Slides are polished. You are mid-sentence, making a key point. Then a notification slides in from the corner of your screen. Maybe it is a Slack message from a coworker venting about the same client. Maybe it is a personal email with a medical subject line. Maybe it is a dating app match.

Everyone in the meeting saw it.

This is not a hypothetical scenario. It happens constantly. A 2023 survey found that over 60% of remote workers have experienced an embarrassing notification during a screen share. The consequences range from mild awkwardness to genuine professional damage.

The good news: you can prevent it. This guide covers every method to hide notifications during screen sharing, from operating system settings to browser configuration to purpose-built tools. We will start with the basics and work up to a comprehensive setup that leaves nothing to chance.

Why notifications during screen sharing are a real problem

Notification pop-ups during meetings are more than an annoyance. They are a privacy and security risk.

Consider what notifications can reveal:

• Personal messages from friends, family, or partners
• Email subject lines with sensitive content (medical, financial, legal)
• Calendar reminders that reveal your schedule to others
• App notifications from social media, dating apps, or shopping sites
• Work messages about confidential projects visible to the wrong audience
• Banking alerts showing transaction amounts

Any one of these appearing during a client call, a team standup, or a company all-hands can create problems you did not anticipate. And once it is on screen, you cannot take it back.

The solution is layered defense. No single setting catches everything. Here is how to build a notification-proof screen sharing setup, step by step.

macOS: How to enable Focus and Do Not Disturb

Apple's Focus system is the first line of defense on a Mac. It suppresses notifications system-wide, keeping banners and alerts from appearing on screen.

Enabling Do Not Disturb manually

1. Open System Settings (click the Apple menu in the top left, then System Settings).
2. Click Focus in the sidebar.
3. Select Do Not Disturb.
4. Click Turn On to activate it immediately.

You can also toggle Do Not Disturb from the menu bar. Click the Control Center icon in the top-right corner of your screen, then click the Focus tile and select Do Not Disturb.

Scheduling Do Not Disturb

If you have recurring meetings, set a schedule so you never forget:

1. In System Settings > Focus > Do Not Disturb, click Add Schedule.
2. Choose Time Based and set the days and hours that match your typical meeting blocks.
3. You can also choose App Based to trigger Do Not Disturb when specific apps are open (like Zoom or Google Chrome).

Allowing critical apps through

You probably still want certain notifications even during a meeting. Maybe your calendar reminders or phone calls from specific contacts.

1. In the Do Not Disturb settings, click Allowed Notifications.
2. Add specific People who can still reach you.
3. Add specific Apps that are allowed to notify.
4. Under Options, decide whether to allow time-sensitive notifications.

This way, you silence the noise without missing something actually urgent.

Windows: How to enable Focus Assist and Do Not Disturb

Windows has its own notification suppression system. The exact name and location depend on your Windows version.

Windows 11: Do Not Disturb

1. Open Settings (press Win + I).
2. Go to System > Notifications.
3. Toggle Do not disturb to On.

You can also click the date and time area in the taskbar to open the notification center, then toggle Do Not Disturb from there.

Windows 10: Focus Assist

1. Open Settings > System > Focus Assist.
2. Choose your level:
   • Off: All notifications come through.
   • Priority only: Only notifications from your priority list appear.
   • Alarms only: Everything is suppressed except alarms.
3. Select Priority only for meetings. Then customize your priority list to include only what matters.

Automatic rules

Both Windows 10 and 11 let you set automatic rules that activate notification suppression based on context:

• During specific hours (set your typical meeting times)
• When duplicating your display (this catches screen sharing to a projector or external monitor)
• When playing a game (less relevant here, but available)
• When using an app in full-screen mode

The "when duplicating your display" rule is particularly useful. It automatically suppresses notifications whenever you mirror or extend your screen, which covers many in-person presentation scenarios. However, it does not activate during software-based screen sharing in Zoom, Teams, or Meet. You still need to enable Do Not Disturb manually for those.

Priority notifications

When using Priority mode on Windows, customize what gets through:

1. In Settings > System > Focus Assist, click Customize priority list.
2. Add or remove apps and contacts.
3. Decide whether calls and reminders should break through.

Keep this list as short as possible. Every app you add is another potential source of on-screen information leakage.

Chrome browser: Disabling web notifications

Operating system Do Not Disturb settings handle native notifications well. But web notifications are a different story. Many websites request permission to send notifications, and these can appear even when your OS-level settings are configured.

Disabling all web notifications in Chrome

1. Open Chrome and navigate to chrome://settings/content/notifications.
2. Toggle Sites can ask to send notifications to Off (or select Don't allow sites to send notifications).
3. This prevents all websites from sending push notifications through Chrome.

If you have already granted notification permissions to specific sites, they will appear in a list below. Remove any you do not need.

Managing per-site notifications

If you want notifications from some sites but not others:

1. Go to chrome://settings/content/notifications.
2. Under Allowed to send notifications, review each site.
3. Click the three-dot menu next to any site and select Remove or Block.
4. Be especially careful with email clients (Gmail, Outlook), messaging apps (Slack, Teams web), and social media sites.

Browser-level Do Not Disturb

Chrome does not have a built-in Do Not Disturb toggle like your OS does. You are limited to the all-or-nothing approach of disabling notifications globally or managing them per-site.

This is one of the gaps that makes browser-level solutions valuable. More on that below.

Meeting apps: Built-in notification suppression

Some meeting applications have their own notification management features. These are worth enabling as an additional layer.

Zoom

Zoom does not automatically mute system notifications during screen sharing, but it does offer a setting:

1. Open Zoom Settings > General.
2. Look for options related to notification behavior during screen sharing.
3. On some versions, Zoom can suppress its own in-app notifications while you are sharing.

Note that Zoom can only control its own notifications. It cannot suppress notifications from other apps or from your operating system. For all Zoom privacy settings, see our Zoom guide.

Microsoft Teams

Teams has notification settings under Settings > Notifications and activity. You can:

• Set notification style to Banner or Feed only (feed only means no pop-up)
• Mute specific channels and chats
• Turn off notifications for specific event types

During a presentation in Teams, consider setting all notifications to Feed only temporarily.

Google Meet

Google Meet does not have built-in notification suppression. It relies entirely on your OS and browser settings. This makes the system-level and browser-level configurations described above even more important if Meet is your primary meeting tool.

Slack and other messaging tools

If you use Slack, set your status to Do Not Disturb before presenting:

1. Click your profile picture in Slack.
2. Select Pause notifications.
3. Choose a duration that covers your meeting.

Do this for every messaging app you have running. Each one is a potential source of on-screen notification leaks.

The browser-level gap: Why system settings are not enough

You have configured Do Not Disturb on your OS. You have disabled Chrome notifications. You have muted your meeting apps. You are covered, right?

Not entirely. There is a category of notifications that none of these settings catch: in-browser notification elements.

These are not push notifications that your OS can intercept. They are part of the web page itself:

• Gmail tab titles that change to show sender names and subject lines
• Slack web app badges showing message counts and preview text
• Social media notification badges with counts and content
• Email preview panes visible in background tabs
• Banking dashboards showing account balances
• Chat widgets on websites that display incoming messages

When you share your entire screen or even a browser window, all of these are visible to everyone in the meeting. Do Not Disturb cannot help because these are not system notifications. They are rendered content inside your browser.

This is the problem ContextBlur was built to solve.

How ContextBlur handles in-browser notifications

ContextBlur is a Chrome extension that blurs sensitive elements directly inside web pages. Instead of trying to suppress notifications after they appear, it obscures them at the source. See our blur tutorial for a full walkthrough.

Here is how it works for notification privacy during screen sharing:

• Blurs notification badges on Gmail, Slack, Teams, and other web apps so message counts and previews are hidden
• Obscures email subject lines and sender names in your inbox when it is visible in the background
• Hides chat previews and message content in web-based messaging tools
• Covers account balances and transaction details on banking and financial sites
• Persistent blur that stays active as long as you need it, no re-applying after page refreshes

The blur is applied at the DOM level inside your browser. It works regardless of your OS notification settings because it targets the content itself, not the notification delivery mechanism.

You can configure exactly what gets blurred and what stays visible. Need to see your inbox but hide message previews? Done. Want to blur your Slack sidebar but keep channels readable? You can do that.

This is the layer that fills the gap between system-level Do Not Disturb and actual screen sharing privacy.

Combining approaches for maximum privacy

No single tool covers every notification vector. The most reliable setup combines multiple layers. Here is the complete approach.

The layered defense strategy

1. OS-level Do Not Disturb catches native push notifications, app alerts, and system banners
2. Browser notification settings prevent websites from sending Chrome push notifications
3. Meeting app notification settings suppress in-app alerts from Zoom, Teams, Slack, and similar tools
4. Browser-level content blurring (ContextBlur) hides in-page notification elements, email previews, message badges, and other sensitive content rendered inside web pages

Each layer covers what the others miss. Together, they create comprehensive notification privacy during screen sharing.

Pre-meeting checklist

Run through this checklist before every screen share. It takes less than a minute and can save you from a lot of awkwardness.

Before you share your screen:

• [ ] Enable Do Not Disturb on your OS (macOS or Windows)
• [ ] Set Slack, Teams, and other messaging apps to Do Not Disturb
• [ ] Close or minimize tabs with sensitive content (email, banking, social media)
• [ ] Activate ContextBlur to blur any remaining sensitive page elements
• [ ] Close unnecessary applications entirely
• [ ] Check your desktop for files with sensitive names
• [ ] Use "Share a specific window" or "Share a specific tab" instead of sharing your entire screen when possible
• [ ] Do a quick visual check: look at your screen as if you were an attendee

That last point is underrated. Before you click Share, take two seconds to look at your screen from the perspective of someone else in the meeting. You will often catch something you would have missed.

Share a window, not your screen

This deserves emphasis. Most meeting apps give you the option to share your entire screen or a specific window or tab. Always choose the most restrictive option that still works for your presentation.

• Sharing a single tab means only that tab is visible
• Sharing a single window means only that application is visible
• Sharing your entire screen means everything is visible, including notifications, desktop icons, and background windows

The narrower your share scope, the less risk you carry. Combine this with the notification suppression techniques above, and you have a setup that is genuinely hard to breach.

Wrapping up

Hiding notifications during screen sharing is not about a single setting. It is about layers. Each method you add closes another gap.

Start with your operating system's Do Not Disturb. Add browser notification controls. Configure your meeting apps. Then close the remaining gap with a tool like ContextBlur that handles the in-browser content your OS cannot reach. See our comparison of privacy extensions to find the right tool.

The few minutes you spend setting this up will save you from the one notification that could have made your next meeting very uncomfortable.

For more on protecting your privacy during screen sharing beyond just notifications, read our complete guide to screen sharing privacy.