How to Completely Disable Notification Center in Mac OS X

We’ve covered some Notification Center tips at TekRevue, but what if you just don’t want Apple’s notification platform at all? Here’s how to indefinitely banish it from your Mac.

Note: this tip was originally written in April 2013 and tested on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Like all system modifications, it may not work with newer versions of OS X.

First, launch the Terminal app from /Applications/Utilities, enter the following command, and press Return:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist

You’ll see the Notification Center icon disappear from your Mac’s menu bar. You may notice that there’s now a blank space between your rightmost menu bar icon and the edge of your screen. Simply click your Desktop or a Finder window to refresh the menu bar and watch as your icons line up perfectly, with Notification Center banished for good.

Notification Center is now disabled

If you have a change of heart and want to restore Notification Center, hop back into Terminal, enter this command, and press Return:

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist

Just as fast as it disappeared, Notification Center will pop back into your menu bar and all of its features will be restored.

Notification Center is back in action

Disabling Notification Center via this method will survive a reboot and only affects your individual user account. Guest accounts and other users on the same Mac will not have access to Notification Center altered by this command.

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17 thoughts on “How to Completely Disable Notification Center in Mac OS X”

Sabine says:

September 22, 2017 at 6:04 pm

Says : Operation not permitted while System Integrity Protection is engaged

greg_takemoto says:

February 11, 2017 at 4:38 am

Notifications overrides the “select all” command A commands in all of my apps. How do i stop that?

RexFlex says:

January 1, 2016 at 8:56 am

Hi All,
I used the method described above, which worked fine.
However, after the Yosemite Update the Notification Center icon reappeared.
The Notification Center is still disabled but the icon stuck in the menu bar.
Any suggestions on how to get rid of it?
Thanks

Mark Barner says:

September 4, 2015 at 8:34 am

It doesnt work on my mac

Freedom in our lifetime! says:

May 29, 2015 at 1:20 pm

This doesn’t make a blank space appear on my bar, it keeps the notification center icon it just doesn’t work any more.

Joseph Picone says:

April 11, 2015 at 8:57 am

This doesn’t seem to work for Yosemite.

Ellen Eschenbrenner says:

April 10, 2015 at 2:03 pm

Does not work 10.10.2 – notification center still appears in system preferences and is fully functional, all red badges on my app store application still appear, as well dock and launch pad icons. Tried copy/paste into Terminal, tried typing – I’m hoping this just needs an update because it sounds like the perfect fixed.

Tony Batista says:

November 9, 2014 at 9:48 pm

THANK YOU , this was so easy and effective it was pure beauty

babyfasty says:

November 1, 2014 at 7:27 am

Thanks!

taigeair says:

October 18, 2014 at 7:22 am

the button is still there on the menu in yosemite but it’s not working.

ch says:

October 20, 2014 at 3:43 am

exactly, the button is there but its not working. any workaround guys for Yosemite ? 10.10

taigeair says:

October 20, 2014 at 3:58 am

also you know the app screen? when i swipe across the different app panels, it lags. Does that happens for you? I have a new MB air.

ch g says:

November 3, 2014 at 12:33 pm

nopes bro, have not used “app screen” not sure what is that btw :D

Ongaku says:

November 17, 2014 at 2:20 pm

I just found bartender, helped me get rid of NC as well as several other.

markvickers says:

December 3, 2015 at 11:47 am

Same here: button stays on menu bar. When I use the second command, nothing changed except I get a couple of alert bubbles. Grasping at straws, I tried Today Scripts. No difference at all. So having trusted this ‘handy tip’, the only way I can get my Mac back as it was is to format is and start from scratch.
Thanks a bunch, Jim!
(iMac mid-2010 21.5, Yosemite, 16GB, 500GB HD, 500GB SSD.)

TekRevue says:

December 3, 2015 at 12:02 pm

Sorry about that Mark. As you can see from the byline, this tip was written in April 2013, which was the Mountain Lion era. After I saw your comment come in, I added a note before the instructions to clarify that. I wish it were possible, but there’s no way I could go back and edit every single article each time Apple updates its software (this entire site is practically a one-man endeavor and there’s already well over 1,200 articles with more each week). That’s why it’s important to look at the date of any article (on any site, not just here) to ensure that you’re working in the correct context.
If you haven’t already reformatted your Mac, did you try Bartender as one of the previous comments suggested?

Ongaku says:

November 3, 2014 at 8:01 pm

let me know if you find a solution, I have no use for the notification center and want it gone comepletely

Ongaku says:

November 17, 2014 at 2:20 pm

I just found bartender, helped me get rid of NC as well as several other. plenty options.

Jonathan says:

October 3, 2014 at 10:31 am

This saved me when notification center was running away with CPU and causing my fans to scream. I disabled and re-enabled and the problem was solved — thanks!!!!

RexFlex says:

January 1, 2016 at 9:27 am

Right after the NC icon reappeared i tried to remove the icon using the “launchctl unload -w” command from above.
However, it said that it cannot find the service.
Also, the re-enabling of the NC doesn’t work as well.

Bruno says:

January 16, 2014 at 12:52 pm

Thank you very much! My notification center gone missing somehow, and now I could manage to bring it back to life.

D. V. Ahluwalia says:

November 21, 2013 at 10:07 am

works great!

Junio Vitorino says:

November 12, 2013 at 8:39 am

Put this aliases in your .bashrc or .zshrc and thus you can “change your heart” several times. https://gist.github.com/juniovitorino/7430930

neogomo says:

October 11, 2013 at 8:37 pm

Thanks, great tip! BTW, could you share a link to those nice polished SSD icons, depicted on the article’s screenshots? Thank you!

TekRevue says:

October 11, 2013 at 8:47 pm

I think I got them at deviantART: http://www.deviantart.com/art/harddisk-multiset-146793625

neogomo says:

March 5, 2014 at 7:56 pm

Thank you very much!

joSefus says:

September 18, 2013 at 2:09 pm

thanks!

orionrush says:

July 12, 2013 at 5:26 am

Those last two lines seem to contradict each other. Does it only affects your individual user account, or all users?

TekRevue says:

July 12, 2013 at 5:29 am

“Disabling Notification Center via this method will survive a reboot and only affects your individual user account. Guest accounts and other users on the same Mac will not have access to Notification Center *altered* by this command.”
I think you’re just misreading it. This command does not affect other user accounts on the same Mac. As stated, other accounts’ access to Notification Center will not be altered.
I hope this clears up the confusion!