Keep Notifications Off The Lock Screen In Mavericks Beta [OS X Tips]

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Notification Center OS X Mavericks beta

In the new OS X Mavericks beta, there’s a new Notification system in place that mimics much of the way iOS handles notifications. Your iOS notifications, in fact, can push right to your Mac desktop as well.

Much like iOS, each app that uses Notification Center can be set to a fine-grained level of customization, letting you show them in Notification Center (activated with the icon in the upper right corner of your Mac’s screen), decide whether to let them use a Badge app icon, and whether or not to play a sound for each app’s notifications.

If, however, you value your privacy, you may want to disable the default setting that has your notifications showing up even when the display is off or locked.

Here’s how.

First of all, launch System Preferences on your OS Mavericks beta enabled Mac, and click on the new Notifications preferences icon. Once there, you’re able to schedule Do Not Disturb times, just like iOS, and then manage what shows up in Notification, and how it shows up there.

To make sure that applications aren’t dropping a notification onto your Mac when the screen is locked or the display is off, for anyone to find and read, you’ll need to hope into the Notification Center preferences for each app individually. For each application in the left-hand column, click on the app icon and then uncheck the box that says, “Show notifications when display is off or locked.”

Now, you won’t have a host of Notifications sitting there for you in the morning from when you put your Mac to sleep each night. You’re welcome.

The only thing I wish Apple would do is to make this more of a system-wide, or non-app-specific setting, so you could turn it on or off for all apps at once, instead of having to do this for each specific app. Ah, well; maybe next beta.

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