Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

The Notification Center

All right, now you know how to dismiss, stifle, or respond to notification bubbles. But what if you miss one? Or you decide to act on it later?

Thought you’d never ask.

All of those “Hey you!” messages collect on a single screen called the Notification Center (Figure 18-3).

To make it appear on a laptop, swipe two fingers onto the trackpad from the right. (Start the swipe off to the right of the trackpad. It’s the first time you’ve ever crossed the edge of the trackpad with a Mac gesture. Weird.)

Figure 18-3. Right: Here’s the Notification Center, where all those incoming messages pile up, for your inspection pleasure. Left: The Today view shows everything you’ve got coming up—as well as the information widgets you’ve installed here (page 604).

You can also open the Notification Center by clicking the in the upper-right corner of your screen. That’s a handy trick if your Mac doesn’t have a trackpad—if it’s an iMac, for example. (You can also set up “hot corner” or keystroke to open the Notification Center, if you like. See Screen corners and Changing a Menu Keyboard Shortcut.)

Either way, the Notification Center slides onto the screen like a classy black window shade, printed in white with every recent item of interest; whatever was on your screen gets shoved temporarily ...