Where Is Notification Center on Mac? How to Open and Use It (2026)

Notification Center on a Mac sits behind the date and time at the far right of the menu bar. One click on the clock brings in a panel of your notifications and widgets from the right side of the screen. You can also press Fn-N (the Globe key and N on newer keyboards) or swipe left with two fingers from the right edge of the trackpad.

A banner slides in while you're typing, you glance away, and it's gone. The alert usually hasn't vanished, though. It's sitting in a side panel that's easy to forget exists. This guide covers macOS 27, the current version: every way to open and close Notification Center, how to act on what's in it, how to set up its widgets, and why some notifications never land there. The steps follow Apple's Notification Center guide.

How to open Notification Center on Mac

There are five ways to open Notification Center on a Mac, and they all show the same panel. Clicking the date and time works on every Mac; the others are faster once you've picked one and stuck with it.

Apple lists Fn-N as "Show or hide Notification Center" in its Mac keyboard shortcuts list, and the trackpad swipe and the menu bar click come from Apple's notifications guide. On a keyboard that has a Globe key instead of an Fn key, the Globe key does the same job, as MacMost points out.

Fn-N is the one I've trained into my fingers. When a banner disappears halfway through a sentence, I press it, read the notification and press it again to get back to what I was writing, without reaching for the trackpad.

Set a Hot Corner for Notification Center

A Hot Corner opens Notification Center when you push the pointer into a corner of the screen, which suits a mouse better than a swipe. Apple's Hot Corners guide lists Notification Center as one of the actions:

1. Choose Apple menu → System Settings.
2. Click Desktop & Dock in the sidebar; it's partway down the list.
3. Click Hot Corners.
4. Pick a corner, then set its menu to Notification Center.
5. Click Done.

If you keep triggering it by accident, hold Command, Option, Shift or Control while you choose the action. The corner then only fires when you hold that key too, Apple notes.

Give Notification Center its own keyboard shortcut

You can assign any key combination to Notification Center in the Mission Control section of Keyboard Shortcuts, where the item is called Show Notification Center, per MacMost. That helps if your keyboard has no Fn or Globe key, or you'd simply like a different combination. Apple's page on changing shortcuts has the general method:

1. Open System Settings and click Keyboard in the sidebar.
2. Click Keyboard Shortcuts.
3. Choose the Mission Control category.
4. Select the checkbox next to Show Notification Center.
5. Double-click the current shortcut, then type the new combination.

If the new combination clashes with one another app uses, change one of them, Apple says. Our list of Mac keyboard shortcuts has the rest of the built-in ones.

How to close Notification Center

To close Notification Center on a Mac, click anywhere on the desktop, click the date and time in the menu bar again, or use a two-finger swipe to the right, toward the right edge of the trackpad. All three come from Apple's guide. Fn-N also closes it, since Apple describes that shortcut as show or hide.

How to use notifications in Notification Center

Notifications in Notification Center respond when you hold the pointer over them: that's when the Clear button, the action buttons and the arrows appear. Apple's notifications guide describes each move:

• Expand a stack: click the top notification in a stack to see the rest. Click Show less to fold it back up.
• Act without opening the app: click an action button such as Reply in Mail or Snooze in Calendar. If an arrow sits next to the action, click it for more choices.
• Open the item: click the notification to open it in its app. If an arrow appears to the right of the app name, click it to see more detail inside the notification instead.
• Clear one notification: click the Clear button (the X).
• Clear a whole stack: point at the Clear button on the stack's top notification until it reads Clear All, then click it.
• Change that app's settings: click the arrow by the app name, click the More button (three dots), then mute or turn off the app, or choose Notification Settings.

After a long meeting I open Notification Center before I open my inbox. Calendar reminders I've already dealt with get cleared, an email that only needs a line gets one through the notification's Reply button, and whatever's left is my to-do list for the next ten minutes.

How to add, move and remove widgets in Notification Center

Widgets share Notification Center with your notifications and show things like the weather, your next Calendar event or Reminders at a glance. You manage them from the Edit Widgets button under the last widget, as Apple's widgets guide explains:

1. Click the date and time in the menu bar to open Notification Center.
2. Scroll down and click Edit Widgets.
3. Search for a widget, or click a category to browse the gallery.
4. Click a widget (or its Add button) to add it to Notification Center. Dragging it onto the desktop puts it there instead.
5. Click Done in the bottom-right corner of the gallery.

Once a widget is in place, these are the other things you can do with it, all from Apple's guide:

• Move it: drag the widget up or down in Notification Center.
• Change what it shows: Control-click the widget, then pick Edit [widget name]. If that option isn't there, the widget can't be changed.
• Resize it: from the same Control-click menu, pick a different size.
• Remove it: pick Remove Widget in that menu, or hold Option, point at the widget and click its Remove button.
• Open the app behind it: click anywhere in the widget.

Keep the widget list short. I keep my next calendar event and Reminders, and not much else, because a panel full of weather, stocks and photos pushes the notifications out of sight, and the notifications are why I open it.

Use iPhone widgets on your Mac

Your iPhone's widgets can appear in Notification Center too. Per Apple, the iPhone needs iOS 17 or later, the same Apple Account as the Mac, and to be nearby or on the same Wi-Fi network. Turn on iPhone Widgets in System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Widgets. If a widget says "Open [app name] on your iPhone to continue", that app isn't installed on the Mac.

Why a notification isn't showing in Notification Center

A notification that never appears in Notification Center is usually being sent somewhere else, or not at all, by a setting in System Settings → Notifications. Check these in order; the settings are described in Apple's notification settings guide:

1. The app is allowed to notify you. Open System Settings → Notifications, click the app under Application Notifications and make sure Allow notifications is on.
2. Notification Center is one of its places. In the same pane, Alert Style chooses where the app's alerts appear: Desktop, Notification Center or Lock Screen. If Notification Center isn't selected, the alert won't be waiting there after its banner goes.
3. A Focus is on. A Focus such as Do Not Disturb silences notifications, and while one is on, the menu bar shows its symbol, per Apple's Focus guide. Holding Option while you click the date and time turns Do Not Disturb on or off, so it's easy to switch on by accident.
4. The app has its own switch. Mail, Slack and many other work apps have settings of their own that decide which messages trigger an alert at all. Our guides to Mail notifications on Mac and Slack notifications that stopped working walk through those.
5. It came from your iPhone. iPhone notifications reach the Mac only when Allow notifications from iPhone is on in Notifications settings (more on that below).

The time I couldn't find a reminder in Notification Center, it was the Option-click. I had muted the whole Mac with one click on the clock and missed the little Focus symbol that said so.

How iPhone notifications appear on your Mac

Once iPhone Mirroring is set up, your Mac receives your iPhone's notifications, each with a small iPhone badge on the app icon so you can tell them apart, according to Apple's iPhone notifications guide. The iPhone has to be turned on but doesn't need to be nearby. A few details from Apple's page are worth knowing:

• Clearing an iPhone notification on the iPhone clears it on the Mac as well.
• If the iPhone is nearby, clicking one of its notifications opens that app in iPhone Mirroring.
• To stop them, turn off Allow notifications from iPhone in System Settings → Notifications, or turn it off app by app there. On the iPhone, Settings → Notifications → an app → Show on Mac stops one app reaching the Mac only.

How notification summaries change Notification Center

When Apple Intelligence is on, macOS can summarize stacks of notifications so a busy group chat shows its gist instead of every message. The switch is in System Settings → Notifications → Summarize notifications, then pick which apps to summarize, per Apple's summaries guide. Each app also has its own Summarize notifications switch under Application Notifications.

Some languages and regions don't get Apple Intelligence yet, Apple says, so the option may not appear on your Mac. Summaries are a shortcut for skimming, not a replacement for the original: when a summary looks important, click through and read the real message before you act on it.

A quick setup that keeps Notification Center useful

Notification Center works best as a short list you check on purpose, not a second inbox. Ten minutes in System Settings gets it there:

1. Pick one way to open it (Fn-N, a Hot Corner or your own shortcut) and use that one every time.
2. In System Settings → Notifications, set the apps you don't need instantly to Notification Center only in Alert Style, so they wait instead of popping up.
3. Leave desktop banners on for the few apps where timing matters, like Calendar.
4. Set Notification grouping to By Application in each chatty app's settings under System Settings → Notifications, so they arrive as one stack you can clear at once.
5. Trim the widgets to two or three you actually read.