How to disable Google Chrome notifications icon in taskbar

There is nothing in the Windows taskbar that bothers me more than unnecessary notification icons. I like my taskbar clean, displaying only the system icons. In fact I even disable the Action center icon. So I was annoyed when a Notifications and Background icons for Google Chrome appeared. Not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4,… oh wait we are not talking about Lebron here. Back to Chrome – so not 1 but 2 icons appeared after a Chrome updated itself.

Stop Google Chrome from running the background icon

The first one had a pretty obvious way to disable it – Google Chrome icon. If you don’t want Chrome to be running in the background while not in use just right-click on the icon and deselect ‘Let Google Chrome run in the background’ option – and there goes the icon. This is way to easy! 1 down 1 to go!

Remove Google Chrome notifications icon

Probably instinct tells you to right-click on the notifications/alert icon and there will be an option to hide or disable it. Nothing is there so you decide to click on the ‘cog’ icon as it might be hidden in the settings but nothing there either.

As most users would, you turn to Google or if you are feeling adventurous – Bing search, to find a solution. The first few results that turn up all point you to the ‘Flags’ settings for Chrome that can be accessed via the hidden ‘chrome://flags’ page where depending on your version you will need to disable all flags referring to notifications.

After disabling them and restarting Chrome the annoying icon is still there! Do you remember the ‘cog’ icon you might have clicked on earlier? That’s where the solution lies. First click on the notifications icon.

Depending on your Google notifications settings you may see a few cards here. Click on the ‘cog’ icon in the top-right corner of the notifications panel and you will be presented with a panel where all the notifications are selected by default.

Deselect all the check boxes and BOOM – the icon finally disappears and your taskbar is clean from all the unnecessary icons once again!