OS X Yosemite: The Missing Manual

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 10-3).

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.)

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 a keystroke or a “hot corner” to open the Notification Center, if you like. See pages Redefining a Keystroke and Screen corners.)

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 off to the left side.

Tip

To close the Notification Center, swipe the opposite way (left to right) with two fingers. Or just click any other part of the screen. Or click the again. Or press the Esc key. Or just blink really hard.

In Yosemite, the ...