Set Windows itself to stay quiet, rather than relying on each app:
- Windows 11: Settings → System → Notifications → turn on Do not disturb.
- Windows 10: Settings → System → Focus assist → set to Alarms only.
That covers the great majority of interruptions. The rest of this page is the part that catches people out — what those settings do not cover, and why a banner can still appear over a window you have already made private.
Do it faster, mid-call
The settings app is a bad place to be while people are watching. Both versions have a quicker route:
- Windows 11: open the notification centre (Win+N, or click the date and time), and toggle Do not disturb at the top.
- Windows 10: open the Action Centre (Win+A) and click the Focus assist tile — clicking it cycles through Off, Priority only and Alarms only.
Learn whichever applies to your machine before the call rather than during it.
Set it to happen on its own
Windows 11 can turn Do not disturb on for you: Settings → System → Notifications → Turn on do not disturb automatically, which offers options including while duplicating your display and while playing a game.
Useful, with a caveat worth knowing: sharing your screen inside a meeting app is not the same thing as duplicating your display. Screen sharing captures your screen; duplicating sends it to a second physical display. The automatic rule may well not fire for a Zoom or Teams share, so treat it as a safety net rather than the plan.
What these settings do not cover
Four things, in roughly the order they surprise people.
Applications that draw their own pop-ups. Do not disturb suppresses the Windows notification system. Some programs never use it — update prompts, VPN clients, backup tools and a few chat apps draw plain windows of their own. The notification system never sees them, so nothing can suppress them centrally. Close those apps for the call.
Taskbar badge counts. The banner stops; the little number on the icon does not. If the count itself is revealing, unpin the app for the duration.
The window the notification came from. Silencing banners does nothing about the chat application sitting open behind your presentation. That is a window, and it needs handling as a window — see below.
Task View and Alt-Tab. Windows draws those thumbnails itself, showing live content from every window, outside any application’s control. Do not open Task View while presenting.
Why a private window still lets banners through
If you already use something to keep a window off your shared screen, this is the part worth understanding, because it looks like a bug and is not.
Protection is applied to a window. A notification banner is not part of that window — it is a separate window owned by the notification system, positioned in the corner of your screen. Marking your chat app private says nothing about a banner that the operating system raises on its behalf.
So the two settings are complementary, not redundant:
- Do not disturb handles the things that appear.
- Window protection handles the things that are already there.
Doing one without the other leaves a real gap, and it is usually the notification half that people forget until it fires.
The whole checklist, before a call
- Turn on Do not disturb (Windows 11) or Focus assist → Alarms only (Windows 10).
- Close any app known to draw its own pop-ups — VPN clients, updaters, backup tools.
- Protect any window that must stay open but private, and share your entire screen rather than that window.
- Do not open Task View or Alt-Tab while presenting. Switch with Win+1, Win+2 and so on, which raise a window without drawing previews of everything else.
- Afterwards, turn notifications back on. Nothing here reverts by itself.
Check it on someone else’s screen
Join a meeting from your phone, share your entire screen, and send yourself a message. Watch the phone. That takes a minute and replaces an assumption with a fact — and it is the only way to find out that a particular app draws its own pop-ups before it does so in front of a client.
If you also need a window to stay open and readable while nobody watching can see it, Hushglass does that on Windows 10 version 2004 or later, free for one window. The notification half of this page still applies either way.
Frequently asked questions
Does Windows turn off notifications automatically when I share my screen?
Not reliably. Windows 11 can enable Do not disturb automatically while you are duplicating your display or playing a game, under Settings → System → Notifications → Turn on do not disturb automatically. Sharing a screen inside a meeting app is not the same thing as duplicating your display, so do not count on it firing. Set it yourself.
Will people still see the notification count on my taskbar?
Yes. Do not disturb stops the banner sliding in; it does not clear badge counts on taskbar icons, and those are part of your screen like anything else. If a count on an icon is itself revealing, unpin the app for the call.
Do meeting apps not handle this themselves?
Some do, for their own notifications only. Teams suppresses its own banners while you present, and Zoom has a setting for its own chat. Neither can silence anything that is not itself, which is why the Windows-level setting is the one that actually covers you.
I turned it on and a pop-up still appeared. What was it?
Almost certainly an application drawing its own window rather than raising a Windows notification. Update prompts, VPN clients, backup tools and some chat apps do this, and the notification system never sees them, so Do not disturb cannot suppress them. Close the app for the call.
Does making a window private also stop that app's notifications?
No, and this is the most common misunderstanding. Protecting a window covers that window. A notification banner is a separate window owned by the notification system, so it is captured normally. The two are different problems and both need solving.
