How to Enable or Disable Windows Security App Notifications

Microsoft Defender usually notifies its users about the health and security of their devices. In case you find such information annoying, you may choose to hide all the notifications from the Windows Security App or the ones that are non-critical. This post presents a simpler way to either enable or disable Windows Security App Notifications on Windows platforms.

Hiding such notifications will not cause users to modify any settings on the antivirus interface. Well, in this post, we have come up with two ways to get rid of unnecessary notifications. They are by modifying the registry or altering the Group Policy.

Turn On/Off Windows Security App Notifications

Windows 11/10 allows enabling as well as disabling all notifications from the Windows Security app. However, if you don’t want to miss any important notifications, you may choose to hide only non-critical notifications. Below, we have elaborated on both these prompts –

Hide non-critical notification – When enabled, Windows Security will notify you of only critical actions. The rest like PC health information will not appear under the notification panel.
Hide all notifications – By activating this feature, you won’t see any notifications from Windows Security.

1. By modifying the Registry

The registry includes a DWORD entry altering which you can disable or re-enable the notifications from the Windows Security Center. To do so, follow the below guideline –

Warning: As you are going to modify the registry a bit, make sure to create a system restore point. If anything goes wrong after applying the changes, you may use this backup to restore your PC effectively.

Here’s how to disable Non-critical Windows Security App Notifications –

Right-click on the Windows icon and select Run.
Type regedit in the text field and press Enter.
When the UAC window appears, hit Yes to authorize access.
Next, browse to the following path location –

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender Security Center\Notifications

Right-click anywhere on the right pane and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
Rename this file to “DisableEnhancedNotifications”. Double-click over the newly created entry and put 00000001 in the Value data field.
Close the registry and restart your computer to implement the changes performed so far.

Imp: To re-enable the non-critical notifications from Windows Defender, reach out to the above path, and delete the newly created DWORD entry.

How to hide all notifications from the Windows Security App

In case you want to disable all notifications from the Windows Security App, reach out to the same path (as discussed above). However, this time, you need to create a new key, and rename this to “DisableEnhancedNotifications”. The rest procedure is similar to that of hiding non-critical notifications.

2. By Configuring Group Policy

Only those users who have installed Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise editions can avail of this method. This is because Windows 10 Home users don’t have access to the group policy. Here’s how to configure the group policy –

Hide non-critical notifications

Press Win + S to launch the Search UI.
Type “policy” in the text field and click the top result i.e. “Edit Group Policy”.
Select Computer configuration > Administrative templates.
Now, reach out to the following path by expanding the ladder –

Windows components > Windows Security > Notifications

Note: If you are on Windows 10 version 1803 or lower, replace “Windows Security” with “Windows Defender Security Center” in the above path.

On the right pane, double-click the policy – Hide non-critical notifications.

By default, you will see “Not configured” option pre-selected on the succeeding screen.
Mark the Enabled or Disabled radio button followed by Apply > OK.
Lastly, restart your computer to incorporate the above changes.