Recently Gmail introduced an HTML5-based desktop notification feature for Google Chrome users (see this). It's very useful, however, the notifications disappear too quickly (in about 5 seconds) and I couldn't find a way to change the display time. Ideally, I would like the notification to stay for a few minutes if there is no user activity (or about 15 seconds if there is user activity). Is that possible?

4 Answers

Tip: in your Gmail settings choose "Mail notifications off".

Instead, install the Chrome extension Mail Checker Plus for Google Mail which gives you the option to set 'show time' for notifications.

Also, this extension shows more elaborate notifications, has a "Sound notifications" option, and a few other interesting settings.

Apparently not (well, not yet anyway):

From the "Learn more" link:

1. Click the Settings link in the upper-right corner of Gmail.
2. On the General tab, select the option you'd like in the Desktop Notifications section. You'll be able to turn Chat notifications on or off, and can also choose to turn email notifications off, receive notifications for all incoming email, or only those Gmail marks 'important'.
3. Click Save.

And then on the Settings page on my Gmail account, I don't see anything about time to display. It's just this:

• New mail notifications on - Notify me when any new message arrives in my inbox
• Important mail notifications on - Notify me only when an important message arrives in my inbox
• Mail notifications off

3

I found that the webkit desktop notification API call Notification.show() displays the notification indefinitely. Gmail probably have done something like using setTimeout() with Notification.close() to hide the notification after a few seconds. So, it is impossible to configure Chrome to prolong the notification display time.

When the notification appears, there is a setting icon in the box that allows you to set what corner the notification will appear in and for how long. When opening Chrome or Gmail in Chrome be ready to click it before it disappears.

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