Earlier this year, Microsoft Edge was updated with a new feature that hides annoying browser notification dialogs commonly used by news publishers, platforms social media and websites to constantly feed users with links to their content, spam or even malware.
Browsers only send notifications to users when they are open in the background. If the browser is not running in the background, users may miss important updates such as emails post officeh, appointments or reminders scheduled through a website or web application (PWA).
Another problem with this approach is that users experience a "flood" of notifications when they start their browser the next day.
To address this issue, update Microsoft Edge import now a new feature that uses a new set of APIs to enable support for background web alerts.
This will allow users of Windows 10 receive notifications while Microsoft Edge is closed and will reduce notification spam by enabling real-time notifications. The feature is rolling out now to anyone using Edge 85 on Windows 10 version 20H1 and 20H2.
Microsoft also enables support for taskbar notification badges. This feature was limited to natives applications, όπως Mail & Calendar, Teams, etc. but eventually it's also coming for Microsoft Edge apps, PWAs and on pinned sites.
Currently, PWAs only work when the browser is open. If you close the browser, you will not see any signals on the taskbar.
For sites that want to use Microsoft Edge bookmarking systems, Microsoft provides instructions here.