How to turn off Opera promotional notifications on the desktop

[harlan4096]

When you install the Opera web browser, you may get promotional notifications on the desktop from time to time. I recently received a "Welcome to Opera" notification on a Windows 10 system stating that Opera's built-in ad-blocker improved the page loading time by up to 90%.

The prompt had a "try now" and a "don't show again" option, and a close button attached to it. I only ever saw Opera advertising features of its own products using the notification system.

Since I'm no fan of desktop notifications, I decided to investigate to find out why the notification was displayed in first place and how to turn it off.
 
The Opera browser comes with a set of preconfigured options and one of these allows the browser to show promotional notifications on the desktop.

Here is how you turn these notifications off in the Opera web browser:

1. Either load opera://settings/privacy in Opera's address bar directly or select Menu > Settings > Advanced > Privacy & Security.
   
2. Scroll down until you find the "Display promotional notifications" options under Privacy & Security.
   
3. Toggle the preference to turn it off. A gray slider indicates that it is off, a blue one that it is enabled.
   

Opera won't show promotional notifications afterwards anymore.

While you are at it; you may also want to turn off "Receive promoted Speed Dials and Bookmarks" under Start Page in the options if you have not already. Doing so removes sponsored tiles on the Start page.

Last but not least, you may also disable "Show Continue Shopping section" and "Show Continue on Booking.com section" if you don't need these displayed on the Start page of the web browser.

Closing Words

It is a good idea to go through a browser's settings when you run it for the first time, regardless of whether you install the browser or run a portable version instead. You may catch things like promotional notifications in Opera then and disable those as most Internet users probably dislike them.

Now You: Do you use Opera?`How do you handle promotional content in your browser?

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