Chrome Becomes A Good OS X Citizen, Adds Native Notifications

Sometimes, app developers have ideas for fancy new features that just clashes with the ideas and policies of operating system developers. Sometimes, when you're big enough, you get to push your own way anyway. And sometimes, that eventually turns out to be a bad idea. Google Chrome's Notification Center was one such example, which Google eventually retired because, in the end, no one was using it. Resolving to be better citizens on its respective platforms, Google has added support for Mac OS X's native notifications in the latest experimental builds of the Chrome browser.

It might seem like too big a deal to make out of notifications, but this part of the user experience sticks out like a sore thumb when not done right. Google thought it had the answer when it introduced its own special notification center distinct, separate, and disconnected from the OS' own notification systems. In hindsight, it might not have been too smart an idea. Late last year, Google called it quits and killed off the feature. Why? Because apparently no one was using it anyway.

Browser notifications, however, are still very, very important. Now Google has no choice but to adopt the OS' own native notification system for its own. It might sound like a loss but the move does have benefits. Chrome notifications will look and behave like any other OS X notification. And that means being able to respect your settings, like when not to disturb you with notifications.

At the moment, Google is still actually toying with the feature, so it isn't enabled yet. If you really want to get rid of those custom notifications, you'll have to live with using the unstable nightly ("canary") build of Chrome for OS X and then go to chrome://flags/#enable-native-notifications to turn it on. No word on when Google plans to roll it out to the masses.

VIA: The Next Web