Stay notified in Windows 10

“Windows 10’s new Action Center
 here’s how it works”

One of Windows 10’s most 

radical changes is the way in 

which it provides 

notifications. Previously you’d see a 

little white flag appear in the 

 Taskbar's notification area with a 

pop-up balloon on hand to keep you 

informed. Now notifications are much 

more visible thanks to the new Action 

Center, which appears on the 

right-hand side of your desktop.

It’s now primarily concerned with 

delivering notifications, both from 

Windows and supported apps, but it 

also contains a number of useful 

shortcuts in the form of action 

buttons. Up to 13 different buttons 

are available, but many like Rotation 

lock, Airplane mode and Bluetooth 

will only appear on portable devices 

like laptops or tablets. In this tutorial 

we’ll show you how to navigate the 

Action Center, plus customize it to 

show only those notifications you 

want to receive.

Notification banners

Individual notifications will – by default – slide out on-

screen just above the Taskbar Notification area, accompanied by a 

sound. If you want to respond to this , Notification banners try 

clicking it – it’ll hopefully launch the correct app or system setting 

for you to take action. After a short pause the notification will 

disappear, or you can click the close button to dismiss it.

Open Action Center

Look for the Action Center’s icon in the Notification area of

the Taskbar – it’s the speech bubble icon. Clicking this will slide

the Action Center itself into view, complete with list of recent

notifications. Navigating it is relatively straightforward – use the

annotated screenshot to help you if necessary. Click anywhere

else on-screen to hide it from view again.

Review notifications

When the Action Center is open, a summary of each

notification – organized by app or type – is displayed in a

chronological list, with the most recent notification at the top.

Some notifications disappear automatically the next time the

Action Center is closed, while others will stick around. Manage

these in the same way you would individual notification banners.

Manage notifications

At the present time, few apps use the Action Center, but as

new updates are released it’s likely more and more will switch to

using this rather than their own notification systems to grab your

attention. If you’re unhappy receiving notifications from a

particular app in this way, simply right-click a notification in the

list and choose ‘Turn off notifications for this app’.

Configure notifications by app

Click ‘Start > Settings > System > Notifications & actions’.

Scroll down to the ‘Show notifications from these apps’ section.

Use the switch next to each app to enable or disable notifications

for that specific app, or click the app name to disable the slide-out

banners and notification sounds it without switching off

notifications altogether.

Customize notification sound

If you’d like to change (or disable) the sound made when a

notification arrives, type ‘sound’ into the Search box and open

Sound Control Panel. Switch to the Sounds tab, scroll down the

Program Events window and select Notification. Now click the

Sounds drop-down menu and choose a different sound or select

(None) to disable it. Click ‘OK’ to make the change.

Action buttons

You’ll notice a number of handy shortcut buttons at the

bottom of the Action Center. If they’re taking up too much room,

click the ‘Collapse’ button above them to hide all but the top four

buttons. You can configure which four buttons are shown via

‘Settings > System > Notifications & actions’. Click a button and

choose a replacement for it from the drop-down list.

Enter a quiet zone

Notifications can be distracting, so it’s handy to know you

can temporarily disable them completely with a single click: to do

so, open the Action Center and click the ‘Quiet Hours’ button.

When you’re ready to switch them back on, click ‘Quiet Hours’

again. You can also toggled the feature by right-clicking the

Action Center’s taskbar notification area icon.

Change colour scheme

The Action Center – along with the Start menu and Taskbar

– utilize a black color scheme by default. You can make this

match your background: click ‘Start > Settings > Personalization >

Colors’ and flick the ‘Show color on Start, taskbar and action

center’ switch to ‘On’. Flick ‘Automatically pick an accent color…’

to ‘Off’ if you’d like to choose your own color scheme.

Staying informed

The Action Center is a key part of Windows 10, so now

you’ve mastered it and tweaked it to your personal tastes you can

take full advantage of its ability to give you timely information

when you need it. As time goes on and more programs are

updated to use it, you’ll find the Action Center becomes an

integral part of your day-to-day computing life