14 DAY TRIAL // Google isn’t really the biggest supporter of the Microsoft Store app push, and the company has until now tried to stay away from the UWP concept, but given the growing adoption of Windows 10, it has no other option than to embrace at least some of the features the operating system brings.
One of them is the notification system, as Google is now planning to add support for native Windows 10 notifications in a future update for Chrome browser.
No ETA has been provided at this point, but a post on the Chromium bug tracking system reveals that the browser is getting a new flag that would “enable Windows notifications,” essentially paving the way for native Windows 10 notifications in the browser.
“This allows the user to manually opt into using Windows native notifications instead of Chrome's version of the notifications. Note: This flag is ignored on versions of Windows old enough not to support native notifications,” Chromium engineer Finnur Thorarinsson posted.
Chrome is the top desktop browser
It’s believed notifications could be offered on Windows 8.1 as well, though this is yet to be confirmed. By integrating support for Windows 10 notifications in Chrome browser, Google will also bring the application to the Windows 10 Action Center. Windows 8.1, on the other hand, does not have an Action Center.
It’ll take a while until notification support in Chrome arrives on Windows 10, as the feature needs to get through all development channels of the browser. It will most likely be included in Chromium first, before being then upgraded to Canary builds of Google Chrome and then making it to Chrome dev, beta, and stable builds.
Google Chrome is currently the number one desktop browser with a market share that exceeds 60%. For comparison, Microsoft Edge, which is the default browser in Windows 10, is far behind with approximately 5% share, despite a rather aggressive push from Microsoft.