What is the best way to stop those requests for notifications and possibly location access?

[hajime]

Hello, under Catalina, what is the best way to stop the Mac from asking me acceptable of notifications from apps and seeing those notifications? I do want to get notifications from only Apple when updates are available.

In general, is it bad to deny location access automatically?

 

[revmacian]

Hello, under Catalina, what is the best way to stop the Mac from asking me acceptable of notifications from apps and seeing those notifications? I do want to get notifications from only Apple when updates are available.

In general, is it bad to deny location access automatically?

You should be able to turn off notifications for each app in System Preferences > Notifications

As far as location access. Are you talking about location access for apps or for websites in Safari?

 

[hajime]

You should be able to turn off notifications for each app in System Preferences > Notifications

As far as location access. Are you talking about location access for apps or for websites in Safari?

Good question! For notifications and location access, which is better to be on and which is better to be off? I suppose it is better to get notifications from Apple when OS update is available but may not from the rest.

I notice that since I moved back to Mac, I get lots of request for notifications and location access. Kind of annoying.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

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[revmacian]

Good question! For notifications and location access, which is better to be on and which is better to be off? I suppose it is better to get notifications from Apple when OS update is available but may not from the rest.

I notice that since I moved back to Mac, I get lots of request for notifications and location access. Kind of annoying.

I need to know.. are you talking about websites in Safari or apps outside of Safari? The reason I need to know is because the options are in different places:
* App notifications (system wide): System Preferences > Notifications
* Safari Notifications and locations access (only for Safari): Safari > Preferences > Websites

I personally don't allow notifications, location access, auto-play, camera, microphone, screen sharing for any website. I have found that turning those things off means I don't get bothered by websites much.

 

[hajime]

I need to know.. are you talking about websites in Safari or apps outside of Safari? The reason I need to know is because the options are in different places:
* App notifications (system wide): System Preferences > Notifications
* Safari Notifications and locations access (only for Safari): Safari > Preferences > Websites

I personally don't allow notifications, location access, auto-play, camera, microphone, screen sharing for any website. I have found that turning those things off means I don't get bothered by websites much.

I see. Both then. Your settings sounds good to me.

I also noticed that when installing Parallels, it asks for all sorts of access such as camera, folders. Is it also a good idea to say no to all? If think by doing so, I may not be able to drag and drop files/folders between Mac OS and Windows/Linux under Parallel.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

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[revmacian]

I see. Both then. Your settings sounds good to me.

I also noticed that when installing Parallels, it asks for all sorts of access such as camera, folders. Is it also a good idea to say no to all? If think by doing so, I may not be able to drag and drop files/folders between Mac OS and Windows/Linux under Parallel.

As @Erehy Dobon said, it depends on your needs and use case. Everyone is different and my settings might be horrible for you - I'm a very strict and security-minded person so my settings might be too limiting for others. The best advice I can give you is for you to go through the following settings and set them according to your likes:
* App notifications (system wide): System Preferences > Notifications
* Safari Notifications and locations access (only for Safari): Safari > Preferences > Websites

Check those out, there are a lot of settings in there for you to fine tune your computer experience.

 

[hajime]

Do you need to give Parallels permission to access your camera? How would we know the answer to this? It's your computer, your life.

You don't even bother to give a single iota of information about what you want Parallels to do for you. No one here can give the slight suggestion relevant to your usage case because you don't even bother to describe it.

If Parallels can do Windows Hello face login via the MBP webcam, I would give permission for it to access my camera. Otherwise no.

If Windows under Parallels is better supported (in terms of drivers, better battery life and less fan noise) than Windows under Bootcamp, then I use Parallels for both Windows (Solidworks CAD, Office, Visual Studio) and Linux. Otherwise, I only want to use Parallels if I need to install Linux.

 

[revmacian]

If Parallels can do Windows Hello face login via the MBP webcam, I would give permission for it to access my camera. Otherwise no.

If Windows under Parallels is better supported (in terms of drivers, better battery life and less fan noise) than Windows under Bootcamp, then I use Parallels for both Windows (Solidworks CAD, Office, Visual Studio) and Linux. Otherwise, I only want to use Parallels if I need to install Linux.

I'm afraid I can't help you with that, I've never run Parallels and I haven't touched a Microsoft product since 2001. I've been Linux/BSD/Mac for almost 20 years.

 

[hajime]

I need to know.. are you talking about websites in Safari or apps outside of Safari? The reason I need to know is because the options are in different places:
* App notifications (system wide): System Preferences > Notifications
* Safari Notifications and locations access (only for Safari): Safari > Preferences > Websites

I personally don't allow notifications, location access, auto-play, camera, microphone, screen sharing for any website. I have found that turning those things off means I don't get bothered by websites much.

I am setting up my new Mac. For the past few days, I just clicked deny for all request for notifications. I went to System Preferences > Notifications and noticed that some apps still have notifications on. I noticed that these are Apple's apps. Could this be that they were turned on by default? Those that have notifications on are: FaceTime, Numbers, Pages, Safari, Wallet (never use), Xcode, Calendar, Game, Screen time, Book, Home, Music, Message, Mail, Reminders, Photos. Which one can I turn off without affecting the app's normal operations?

 

[revmacian]

I am setting up my new Mac. For the past few days, I just clicked deny for all request for notifications. I went to System Preferences > Notifications and noticed that some apps still have notifications on. I noticed that these are Apple's apps. Could this be that they were turned on by default? Those that have notifications on are: FaceTime, Numbers, Pages, Safari, Wallet (never use), Xcode, Calendar, Game, Screen time, Book, Home, Music, Message, Mail, Reminders, Photos. Which one can I turn off without affecting the app's normal operations?

Yes, those are turned on by default. You can turn any of those notifications settings off, this will only result in you not receiving notifications for that specific app. This is really up to personal choice and is likely different for everyone.

You do need to understand, however, that turning off notifications for an app will mean that you don't receive notifications for that app. So, if you turn off notifications for Reminders, for example, you won't receive any "reminder" when a task is due. I only have notifications turned off for Books, Games, News and Wallet.. the rest have their default notifications settings.

Website notifications are different from system notifications and your web browser will likely have its own website notifications settings, so you really should check browser settings as well - Safari has a setting for website notifications (Safari > Preferences > Websites > Notifications). Turning off Safari notifications in macOS System Preferences will mute website notifications. But, turning off website notifications inside Safari will not mute Safari notifications in System Preferences. System notifications are separate from website notifications.