notifications

Since a week or so ago, I noticed that even when my Mac's display was put to sleep, my external display would sometimes turn on and remain on for long periods of time if I had a calendar reminder or some other type of non-dismissible notification. It would even come on (and turn off shortly thereafter) for quick notifications.

This was highly annoying, especially when I'd come to my computer in the morning and realize the external monitor had been on displaying a notification all night!

Apparently macOS 10.12.2 includes a new feature called Enhanced notifications, and they can wake up internal or external displays to show notifications. Annoyingly, this new feature is enabled by default. To disable it, you need to go into the Notifications System Preference, and inside the 'Do Not Disturb' section, and check the "When the display is sleeping" option under "Do Not Disturb":

Update (7/20/14): You can finally disable the notifications icon by selecting "Hide Notifications Icon" from the Chrome menu:

Original post below.

Today, I received a mysterious notification from one of my Chrome extensions that popped up under a generic alarm bell icon in my Mac OS X menu bar:

No thanks. I have Notification Center (built into Mac OS X), and if I wanted to see spammy notifications from Chrome extensions, I would enable them there. I know I can disable individual (or all) extensions from this Chrome Notification Center, but that doesn't make the icon go away. Nor does the standard trick of holding down the command key and dragging the icon off the menu bar.