Are you seeing notifications for Microsoft Defender or other applications in Windows 11? Microsoft displays advertisements via notifications. Fortunately, there is a way to turn them off.

Microsoft isn’t afraid to turn Windows into an advertising poster. Windows 10 users are now seeing full-screen advertisements about purchasing a new PC. With Windows 11, Microsoft’s approach is more subtle, but no less disruptive. Windows Latest discovered that Microsoft was displaying advertisements in the notification window.

Among other things, Microsoft uses Windows notifications to promote the Defender app, even though it is installed on your PC by default. The notification contains a link to a Defender webpage in your Microsoft 365 account. Defender is basically included for free in your subscription and the advertising is therefore mainly used to promote Microsoft 365.

But Microsoft also shows advertising for games in the notification. Microsoft said in a statement to Windows Latest that it wants to use this advertising method to “provide Windows users with choices to discover new products and services.” Microsoft doesn’t seem to want to recognize that such marketing tricks are largely counterproductive.

Disable notifications in Windows

You can click away the notification, but that doesn’t mean it can’t return. Luckily, there is a way to completely disable notifications in Windows. To do this, go to the menu in Settings Notifications. Check the two options below Additional settings definitely out.

If you want to completely remove notifications, disable them for all applications that use this option Receive notifications from apps and other senders. You can also set per app whether you want to receive notifications or not.