Enable notifications while playing games or watching videos in full screen mode in Windows 11/10

While playing your favorite game or watching a full-screen video, you may also like to keep a check on what’s happening in the background. As such, you can choose to receive important messages and notifications from Windows. Sadly, when you switch to a game or watch-full screen window, you do not receive notifications. This default behavior can be corrected and you can enable notifications in full-screen mode.

Enable full-screen notifications in Windows 11/10

Although you find no messages or notifications delivered during full-screen mode use, all of them are quietly moved inside the Action Center where the user can read them later. To enable full-screen notifications in Windows 11/10:

1. Open Settings
2. Go to Focus Assist section
3. Navigator to Automatic Rules
4. Enable When I’m playing a game
5. EnableWhen I’m using an app in full-screen mode.

Windows by default configures Focus Assist to hide notifications when you switch to a full-screen mode while playing games or watching videos. This can be changed by the following method.

This is how the settings look in Windows 11:

This is how the settings look in Windows 10:

1] Go to Focus Assist

Focus Assist also called Quiet Hours in earlier versions of Windows allows you to avoid distracting notifications when you need to stay focused and is set by default to activate automatically under certain conditions. So, select the ‘Action center’ icon from the taskbar and choose ‘Focus assist’. Next, right-click it and select ‘Go to settings’ option.

2] Switch to Automatic Rules

In the right-pane of Focus Assist Settings, switch to ‘Automatic Rules’.

3] Enable Notifications

Here, you will find that there are two options that are enabled by default,

• When I’m playing a game
• When I’m using an app in full-screen mode

Now, to allow the notifications and important messages to be displayed even during the times you are playing games or switched to full-screen mode, disable the options.

Do it by simply moving the slider to ‘Off’ position.

Likewise, if you would not like to be distracted by these notifications when you need to stay focused, simply enable the above two options. In this way, you can enable or disable notifications during Presentations or while playing Games.

Now read: How to enable or disable Full-screen optimizations on Windows 1/10.