If you have computers that are used continuously or exclusively for presentation then you may want to look at ways of stopping popup or toast notifications in Windows 10. After all one of the most annoying notifications is the one for new updates which is modal and therefore unable to be ignored, then it opens another window which can be very annoying.
(Presentation computers should also have the Updates settings changed so the updates don’t just automatically install when MS feels like it and disrupt your use of the computer)
Using the Local Group Policy Editor you can accomplish the removal of notifications by permanently enabling Quiet Hours mode and preventing it from being turned off. This is only a per user setting rather than for the whole computer so you’ll want to ensure you have a limited number of users on such a computer and you will need to make the changes for each one individually. You must be using an edition of Windows that allows local group policy editing, such as Pro, Enterprise or Education.
Here you can see where to find the settings in the local group policy and what they can be set to. The minimum I recommend are:
- Set the time quiet hours begins – I enabled this and set it to 0 minutes after midnight
- Set the time quiet hours ends – I enabled this and set it to 1439 minutes (23 hours 59 minutes) after midnight.
- Turn off quiet hours – set to disabled. Doing this turns on quiet hours and it cannot be turned off with the icon in the system notification area. (The icon gives you the on/off settings in its context menu but clicking on them does nothing; the system will remain quiet)
Any settings you change will take effect more or less immediately.