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I use the in built reminders application in OSX 10.10.5 which pops up notifications to my screen, this is also true for mail and iMessages.

This is great most of the time, but when giving a one to one presentation on my laptop or mirroring my screen to an external display via an mini display port to HDMI cable or via an apple TV, this has the danger of flashing up personal information to the screen.

Is there a "meeting mode" i can enable to temporarily pause notifications popping up to the screen. I still want to reminders, iMessages, mail etc to give me notifications but would like to be able to toggle / pause them without having to go through system prefs.

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40

When you click on the notification icon in the top bar, you can select "Do not disturb" there by clicking the icon and scrolling up, the setting is hidden above the first notification. You'll see that the icon is greyed out to show the change in state.

As a shortcut you can click on the notification icon in the top bar whilst keeping ⌥ ALT pressed to go into "Do not disturb mode".

Notifications won't show up now!

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    I don't see any do not disturb there – user151019 Jan 16 '17 at 11:52
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    @Mark You need to scroll down the notification list after clicking the icon to see the do not disturb control. – Lizzan Jan 16 '17 at 12:01
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    At the very least, I also know that macOS Sierra has an option in system preferences to specifically enable DND when an external display is connected. – Andrew Gies Jan 16 '17 at 20:09
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You can easily activate Do Not Disturb on a Mac to silence notifications temporarily. Just hit the Notification Center icon (the rightmost in the menubar), scroll up to the top, and activate the Do Not Disturb toggle.

Activating DND Mac

You can also schedule Do Not Disturb sessions in System Preferences -> Notifications.

Edit: As @beer's answer mentions, you can click on the notification center icon while holding down Option to quickly toggle DND.

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21

To add to previous answers, if you are mirroring onto a projector or screen, it is possible to disable notifications by going to System Preferences -> Notifications -> Do Not Disturb -> When mirroring to TVs and Projectors and checking the box beside it.

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  • The last sentence of the OP said, "I still want to reminders, iMessages, mail etc to give me notifications but would like to be able to toggle / pause them without having to go through system prefs." (bold highlighting added) and as such your answer "... going to System Preferences->Notifications->Do Not Disturb->When mirroring to TV's and Projectors and checking the box beside it." goes directly against what was asked! – user3439894 Jan 16 '17 at 21:17
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    you do NOT have to go through system preferences every time you want to enable it (I always keep it on) so no, I did not take the question literally, I tried to provide an alternate answer to the ones above so that you don't have to change it every time. – dalearn Jan 16 '17 at 21:22
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    @user3439894 Going to agree with dalearn here. Going into System Prefs once is not what the OP was worried about, it's doing it repeatedly that's not fun. +1 for Dalearn's contribution which is a nice tip. – owlswipe Jan 16 '17 at 22:00
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    @user3439894: Agreed. Actually, the real issue here isn't repeatedly going to Preferences, but rather forgetting that one time. This tip is thus more convenient than some magical keyboard shortcut or quick-click, since you can't forget to do it. – Wayne Jan 17 '17 at 15:07
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If you use Airparrot to manage the mirroring, rather than the inbuilt airplay utility there are options to have notifications flash up locally to your screen but not be mirrored.

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