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How to Permanently Disable Notification Center in OS X Mountain Lion

How to Permanently Disable Notification Center in OS X Mountain Lion

Mountain Lion’s Notification Center is a great feature for many users – but not everyone feels the same way! Some users find the feature annoying, and just want it to die. Fortunately, MacObserver notes there’s a simply way to make that happen by using a quick Terminal command.

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Here’s how it’s done: to permanently disable Notification Center, just fire up Terminal.app, and run the following command:

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

Once the command is executed, Notification Center’s icon will disappear from your Mac’s menu bar, and the feature will be sent into exile, never to annoy you again.

If you find that you miss Notification Center once it’s gone, getting it back is just as easy – just fire up Terminal once again, and enter this command to reverse your action:

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

After running the command, launch Finder, press Shift+CMD+G, and enter the /System/Library/CoreServices directory. Then, just launch Notification Center.app to set the service running once more.

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You can also disable Notification Center temporarily if you prefer. For more Notification Center tips and tricks, check out the juicy tidbits in Apple’s Notification Center Basics document.

For more helpful tips, check out our full collection of tutorials by visiting our How-To category!