Many users became accustomed to the bubble notifications that came with previous versions of Windows from the taskbar. In Windows 8, you can turn those off and on and can also disable toast notifications.
Disable
Before you start, you must be logged into the Administrator account for the computer.
From the desktop or Modern, open the Charms Bar by either hovering in the right-hand corner of the screen or using the “Windows Key + C” keyboard shortcut.
Click “Settings.”
Click “Change PC settings” to open the Windows 8 settings.
Migrate to the “Notifications” settings. You can turn app notifications on or off, show app notifications on the lock screen or play sounds when you get notifications. These can all be shut off by default by clicking “Off” for Show app notifications. You can even tweak the notifications for specific apps you use. This will also remove the ability to go back in with the above steps to enable them again. Also, this will only disable app notifications and not other toast-style notifications utilized by Windows 8.
Turning Off by Group Policy
The steps above work quickly enough for one account in Windows 8. If you want to do it for all users as administrator in Windows 8, you can do so through the Group Policy. This will also be the steps you follow to turn them back on after disabling them. We will point out how to enable them again, too.
From the Start screen, search for “group policy.”
Click on “Settings” in the search window.
Click “Edit group policy.”
Head to User Configuration ->Administrative Templates -> Start Menu and Taskbar -> Notifications.
Double-click on “Turn off toast notifications.”
Click “Disabled,” then “Apply” and “OK.” This will save your change in Group Policy settings to disable toast notifications.
Follow steps 4 through 6 for “Turn off toast notifications on lock screen.” You have successfully turned off toast notifications for every user in Windows 8 on your PC. After turning them off, as we mentioned above, you cannot go into the traditional settings for Windows 8 to turn them back on again. The Notifications settings will be gone. If you follow the above steps and Enable them both again, you will be able to see toast notifications again as well as disable them from the settings once more.
Conclusion
The biggest issue with toast notifications is that they only appear for certain tasks in Windows 8. From the desktop, you can still see the traditional bubble notifications that look out of place with the new sleek Modern UI. By turning off the toast notifications, you can deal with just one type of notifications in Windows 8.
