Google’s Chrome browser has long used its own in-house notification system, which was created before the built-in versions existed in both OS X and Windows, but that’s finally changing.
A new option in Chrome for OS X allows the use of native push notifications for the first time, and Google is testing it behind a feature flag in the browser for now.
Once enabled, push notifications are delivered in the same way you’d see any other alert on OS X, which has the added benefit of respecting your computer’s ‘do not disturb’ settings.
It also has other implications – the ‘rich’ notification API will no longer work given that OS X doesn’t support such customization.
To turn the native option on, head to chrome://flags/#enable-native-notifications and enable the new feature, then restart your browser.
The feature is still in active development and will have some issues, so tread with caution. Google’s engineers also note in the comments that the version you’ll see in the current Chrome release is different to what’s being tested in its unstable nightly builds right now.
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