How do I clear All OS X notifications with 1 click?

Question

I have notifications in the OSX Notification Center, as for most of my apps I am using the setting, "Show in Notification Centre: 10 Recent Items" This is a good setting but rather than have a very full Notification Center, I would still like to clear it from time to time with 1 click.

I am using Yosemite 10.10.3

Answer 1

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "NotificationCenter"
        set numwins to (count windows)
        repeat with i from numwins to 1 by -1
            click button "Close" of window i
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell

Copy and Paste the above code into AppleScript Editor Enable Script Editor in Accessibility

Answer 2

Another option, which uses Keyboard Maestro to run an Applescript is detailed here: http://genuinecuriosity.com/unnotify

I have it mapped so that I hit Command Option 0 to clear all open alert dialogs.

Basically, I have created an Applescript to click the first button on all open alerts (typically Close), and does that until all alerts are cleared. You can use the Applescript directly through Keyboard Maestro (as described in my article), or you can create a Service with Automator (this is a little more finicky due to Accessibility permissions requirements).

The full Applescript is included in the article, along with a screen grab showing the setup in Keyboard Maestro.

Answer 3

I know this was originally for Yosemite, and I'm not sure the answer there, but given the question is 3 years old, and I just found it while looking for the same thing with Mojave, I thought I'd mention the answer I found.

on the very right of the menu bar, click on the 3 lines, this brings up a window with Today / Notifications tabs. If you select the Notifications tab, you can click the X to the right of Today to clear all the notifications for a given day. a few clicks and you'll have all the old ones cleared.

Answer 4

Here's solution that requires the Terminal, but it works with Big Sur. This is useful in particular if you have dozens of notifications from the Finder that can't be quickly closed using other approaches.

From Terminal:

ps -e | grep /NotificationCenter | grep app | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9

This is similar to Joey's answer, except it does it all in one command. ps -e gets a list of running processes. The grep filters the list to those containing /NotificationCenter. This list still has too many items because the grep command itself ends up finding itself. We exclude it by running another grep on the output of that list. The awk command prints the first column, which is the process id that we need to restart. Xargs takes the output of the previous command and feeds it to its arguments, namely, "kill -9" which is the unix command to exit a process.

The practical outcome is that the NotificationCenter.app is stopped. Launchd (the system process that launches other system processes) notices that Notification Center went away, and reinitiates it. When it comes back, all the messages in its queue are lost and your notifications are cleared.

Answer 5

I don't know a way to clear every notification with a single button, however you can clear all of one app's notifications by moving your mouse to the right of the app's header and clicking the small x button that appears there.

To clear them all, I simply move the mouse to the topmost app's x button and rapidly click which removes all of the notifications relatively quickly.

Answer 6

I ended up creating an Automator script to do this and mapping it to a global hotkey.

on run {input, parameters}
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Notification Center"
            set theWindows to every window
            repeat with i from 0 to number of items in theWindows
                try
                    set this_item to item ((number of items in theWindows) - i) of theWindows
                    click button 1 of this_item
                on error
                    -- nothing
                end try
            end repeat
        end tell
    end tell
end run

Answer 7

The small X in El Capitan is in the notification window. Open the Notification pane by sliding in from the right on the mouse or clicking on the notification center icon in the upper left corner. Each application's notifications are grouped together and there is a little X on the right side of each application's header. Click that X and the notifications all go away.

Answer 8

This SIMBL app does the trick nicely. chuckhendo/NotificationClear: SIMBL bundle to add a "Clear All" button to Notification (https://github.com/chuckhendo/NotificationClear)

Just install it using mySIMBL. w0lfschild/mySIMBL: SIMBL plugin manager for macOS (https://github.com/w0lfschild/mySIMBL)

Once installed, you can just open the notification center, then click "Clear" on the bottom.

Answer 9

Just go into the activity monitor and force quit the notification center...

Answer 10

Alt-click usually works to perform one operation on multiple things.

Answer 11

This answer suggests that on Big Sur in its current release there is no satisfactory way to dismiss notifications with a single click (or keyboard shortcut). Instead, this answer explains alternative ways to dismiss them that are not noted elsewhere in this thread.

Two-finger swipe right on the notification group works on Big Sur with the Macbook's trackpad (not sure about Yosemite). It also works with left-click and drag to the right. I assume this would work with an Apple Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad as well.

This doesn't "clear" all notifications permanently. They will still show if you open the notification sidebar. They will also show if another message comes through; instead of seeing 1 notification it will show N + 1 notifications available.

This thread is similar to Dismiss MacOS Big Sur notifications with keyboard.

Answer 12

You can use:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist

Note that its only shuts the service down and not clearing the notification.

To bring it back use:

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist

Answer 13

Here's what worked for me on Big Sur.

1. Create a clear_notifications script

You can do that by running this script from your terminal

write_target=~/bin/clear_notifications
mkdir ~/bin
cat << EOF > $write_target
#!/usr/bin/osascript

# Usage: clear_notifications [partial_title]
#
# Clears notifications from the notification center if they contain the string in [partial_title].
# If no arg is passed in, all notifications are cleared.

on run argv
  tell application "System Events"
     try
       set _groups to groups of UI element 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1 of window "Notification Center" of application process "NotificationCenter"
      repeat with _group in _groups
        set temp to value of static text 1 of _group
          set _actions to actions of _group # Get all the actions within this group
          set isInScope to true

          if (count of argv) > 0 then
            set searchTerm to item 1 of argv
            if temp does not contain searchTerm then
              log "Didn't find any notifications matching " & searchTerm
              set isInScope to false
            end if
          end if

          if isInScope then
            if exists (first action of _group where description is "Clear All") then
              log "Found 'clear all' for " & temp
              perform (first action of _group where description is "Clear All")
            else if exists (first action of _group where description is "Close") then
              log "Found close for " & temp
              perform (first action of _group where description is "Close")
            else
              log "Didn't find close action for " & temp
            end if
          end if

      end repeat
    on error errMsg
        log "Error: " & errMsg
    end try
  end tell
end run
EOF
chmod u+x $write_target

2. Connect the script to a keyboard shortcut.

You can do this using the keyboard shortcut instructions from the accepted answer (similar instructions here), but I find automator clunky and cumbersome for such a simple task. I much prefer using Better Touch Tool.

• Go to Better Touch Tool configuration
• In the left panel, select "All Apps"
• Add a new keyboard shortcut of your choice and choose Execute Terminal Command (Async, non-blocking) as the trigger.
• Enter ~/bin/clear_notifications into the textbox where it says Enter Terminal Command

3. (Optional) Create shortcuts to clear specific notifications

If you just want to clear, say, Calendar notifications, where the title of the notification has the word "Calendar" in it, you can enter the following in the terminal command text box instead. I have terminal notifications from iTerm that let me know when builds are complete, and I mostly use it for that.

• Enter ~/bin/clear_notifications "Calendar" into the textbox where it says Enter Terminal Command

Answer 14

Change the annoying notification app in the notifications preferences, from "alerts" to "banners". Banners are automatically dismissed after few seconds.

Answer 15

Run in Terminal:

killall NotificationCenter