How to hide preview of text contents from Messages.app notifications in Mountain lion?

Question

In Mountain Lion's Notification Centre, I don't like having a notification pop up with the contents of an iMessage text I just got, but I do want to have notifications about it happening.

Is there a way to make it just show a notification without the content, similar to the iOS setting to not "Show preview" that hides the text content from the iOS notification center?

Answer 1

Go to Settings> Notification> Messaging. Scroll down and click the "show preview" option to off

Answer 2

This is not possible with the currently available notification options and configuration of Notification Centre. The three options you have are

• No notifications
• Banner
• Banners that stay until clicked

You have no control over the content of the message, its just shows what is sent by the notifying application.

So looking at iMessages, there is no way to change or limit the notifications that are sent by default to the Notification Centre.

So the only solution I can come up with is to turn off iMessage notifications completely in Notification Centre

Then using iMessage's built in ability to run Applescripts when events are triggered, then send your own notifications without the offending content (more private IMHO for work machines) to Notification Centre by using third party scripts.

Of course, those notifications would have your own defined content and would also have to come from an application that is enabled in Notification Centre.

This thread might give you a start on how to create a notification that can be called from Applescript.