Notification Center

[AcesHigh87]

I hadn't even considered it working with the app closed; I've just always had Mail as an auto-open application when I login. Now that you bring it up though if they could update it to have emails simply pushed as notifications I would love it. It would free up a bunch of my RAM and resources and I could still tell when I have an email.

For now Notification Center, unfortunately, doesn't do much for me as email notifications I get in the dock, I don't use twitter and no one I know with an iDevice uses iMessage. I was expecting it to be basically just built in growl though and, for that purpose, it seems to be working well.

 

[steve-p]

I'm hoping in time I can uninstall Growl and have everything use Notification Centre instead. Although I did read a while back that third party apps may only be allowed to use Notification Centre if they were installed from the Mac App Store, which would not work with some of the things I use Growl for (e.g. DropBox notifications). So I hope that's not the case.

 

[petsounds]

What's push got to do with it? Fundamentally all it needs is for the small part of Mail that deals with receiving emails, either by push or polling, exactly as it does now when the full app is running, to be running all the time in the background.

So...you're suggesting another background service that allocates more RAM and CPU cycles to constantly poll e-mail servers, just so you can get notifications? Then of course, for every other app like that the developer would have to rewrite their code to spin off background tasks. That seems very wasteful and over-complicated for a small payoff.

Personally, I just keep my mail client (I use Thunderbird, not Mail) running and if the dock icon badge pops up, I know I have e-mail. A lot simpler than all this notification stuff. Frankly, I hardly even use Growl currently except for alert tasks like Xcode build completion or test completion on my Continuous Testing utility for Ruby code. And I'm not sure why people are complaining about leaving Mail open, are they really that RAM-constrained?

 

[steve-p]

So...you're suggesting another background service that allocates more RAM and CPU cycles to constantly poll e-mail servers, just so you can get notifications? Then of course, for every other app like that the developer would have to rewrite their code to spin off background tasks. That seems very wasteful and over-complicated for a small payoff.

It works just fine on iOS which has much more limited RAM, lower powered CPU and much smaller battery. So yes, that is what I'm suggesting.

 

[Abazigal]

Center's not showing any new notifications for me. Any way to get it toggled? It's stuck with emails from 1-2 weeks ago.

 

[Wasabisjors]

Apparently Notification Centre doesn't show any banners when running a fullscreen application or game.

Can this be changed somewhere? I understand that Notification Centre blocks banners whilst running e.g. a Keynote presentation.

 

[oneMadRssn]

How and what is the use of notification centre with Safari? Among the others I also see Safari under system preferences > Notifications

If you enable desktop notifications in gmail, it will let you know of new mail and unread gchats.

 

[smartalic34]

If you enable desktop notifications in gmail, it will let you know of new mail and unread gchats.

Is this with a standard Gmail account or Google Apps? I haven't read anywhere of someone getting a standard Gmail account to work, but Google Apps Gmail is working.

 

[rocoloco]

There will be websites that can be notify you throught notification center. (popup ads in notification center )

haha....but seriously, notifications for what? forum quotes, stupid new comments in pinterest,...?

 

[Roofy.]

Am I the only person who wishes you can put weather info in notification center? You'd think with all of the extra room on a mac that they couldve implemented it from the dashboard widget.

 

[Cougarcat]

I'm hoping in time I can uninstall Growl and have everything use Notification Centre instead. Although I did read a while back that third party apps may only be allowed to use Notification Centre if they were installed from the Mac App Store, which would not work with some of the things I use Growl for (e.g. DropBox notifications). So I hope that's not the case.

Any app can use local notifications, but only MAS apps can use push.

 

[iClive]

I can't get anything to show in the Notification Center. No Twitter, Emails or anything from the Messages App.

Everything is Enabled, I have tried restarting but nothing ends up in the Notification Center

Its driving me nuts!

me too! (unless I have mail app open)

 

[petsounds]

Am I the only person who wishes you can put weather info in notification center? You'd think with all of the extra room on a mac that they couldve implemented it from the dashboard widget.

I would really like Notification Center, on both ML and iOS, to allow developers to be able to display their own custom views. Obviously the Weather app can do this on iOS5, so the capability is already there. Certainly there would have to be a max height and some restrictions, but I think it would make Notification Center much more usable. I don't really use it right now on iOS even though I was initially excited by it, and I think it's because it displays everything in this monotone sea of small text. I need more graphical cues.

 

[steve-p]

Any app can use local notifications, but only MAS apps can use push.

So that means that DropBox, Firefox etc could switch to use NC then? Although DropBox is still 32 bit even now, so I'm not hopeful of anything happening anytime soon

 

[oneMadRssn]

Is this with a standard Gmail account or Google Apps? I haven't read anywhere of someone getting a standard Gmail account to work, but Google Apps Gmail is working.

In regular gmail, I enabled desktop alers and they go to notification center.

I guess I should mention that I'm using chrome.

 

[Cougarcat]

So that means that DropBox, Firefox etc could switch to use NC then? Although DropBox is still 32 bit even now, so I'm not hopeful of anything happening anytime soon

Yes, and in the meantime there's Hiss. Dropbox actually releases frequent updates, so I wouldn't be surprised to see native NC support soon.

 

[dyn]

How and what is the use of notification centre with Safari? Among the others I also see Safari under system preferences > Notifications

Notify a download is finished, your upload has finished, that a website requires your attention, etc.

I realize this. But...like everyone is saying, the notifications doesn't do more than give us a superfluous notifications (dock icon notifications + notifications notification).

Basically, what's the point..?

It does exactly what it says: it is a centre for notifications meaning that it is a central place where all the notifications can gather. Think of it as a muster station if you will. You can work on the machine on whatever you want without needing to look at the icons in your dock or go into each application to get to whatever made it notify you. Or simply put: you won't get bugged while you are working on something so you can keep focussing on it. When you have time you simply open the NC and you see all your notifications and what they are. If you want to act upon them or get more detail you can do so. That's also the reason why there is on off-switch on it that will automatically reset itself the following day.

In short: collecting all notifications and making sure that you are not bugged to hell by them (get them out of the way when you need it/want to).

Obviously not many apps support this, ML has just been release. Expect more apps to implement the new notification stuff in the near future. Like many other features apps need to implement them. It'll grow

 

[iClive]

One thing I have noticed is that the X deletes the group of notifications immediately without asking, whereas in ios the X changes to "Clear" giving you the opportunity to change your mind or in case you inadvertently hit it by mistake.

Would be nice to have the same feature in OSX

 

[El Burro]

Guys, if you're looking for a better Mail Notification tweak, check out Herald which is also free. It's been developed for several years now and has a proven record. It has a lot more customization including showing previews of the message, delete message, etc. instead of the half-as.sed effort Apple put into Notification Center which doesn't even work reliably.

I'm still surprised that Apple is calling "Mountain Lion" a new version of OS X. Since when did a few new aesthetic tweaks in the system, and a few new apps be considered an upgrade? I guess Apple is running out of ideas and is afraid of reinventing the wheel now that Jobs is gone.

 

[whsbuss]

I'm still surprised that Apple is calling "Mountain Lion" a new version of OS X. Since when did a few new aesthetic tweaks in the system, and a few new apps be considered an upgrade? I guess Apple is running out of ideas and is afraid of reinventing the wheel now that Jobs is gone.

Its only $20 and for that price even small improvements/features is well worth it.

 

[El Burro]

Its only $20 and for that price even small improvements/features is well worth it.

If you have money to burn then anything is worth it. Then again your average Apple user is usually well off. I got it for free, but wouldn't have bought it otherwise as it's mainly just eye candy.

 

[j800r]

@previous poster: £14 or $20 doesn't really count as "money to burn". I'm on an extremely tight budget and can afford that amount easily. It's nothing.


That out of the way, on to my actual post:


I personally LOVE the concept of NC. Issue I have with it is that it's completely useless cause no app is actually USING it! I don't wanna hear "they'll probably do so in updates" either as ML has been available to devs throughout most of the year so they've had more than enough time to implement the api. My guess would be if they're not supporting it now then they aren't going to. Google Chrome supported it right off the bat! Kinda a joke to me considering I switched back to Safari since version 6. Does anybody know of any third party apps that actually DO support NC? Growl was an independent system and many/most apps got on board with that no problem. Apple releases their own which is built into the OS and, dare I say it, better (imo) and app devs just don't bother? The only app I use that can actually make USE of NC at the moment is Mail and I get so few emails at any time that it barely matters. Not to mention I get emails on my phone as well.

I don't blame Apple for this catastrophe at all. I'm just seriously concerned that Apple finally included a fantastic feature that's long overdue and they may be at risk of removing it because no one chooses to support it...

 

[MacGurl111]

Notifications work.. however my notifications comes in 3s, if I get an email, I will get 3 of the same notifications. Drives me crazy and trying to figure out what's going on..

Twitter notifications are not working for me.

 

[j800r]

Notifications work.. however my notifications comes in 3s, if I get an email, I will get 3 of the same notifications. Drives me crazy and trying to figure out what's going on..

Twitter notifications are not working for me.

Twitter only notifies you if you receive a mention or direct message. You also cannot mention yourself to test it. It doesn't work like that.