How to get notifications from your favorite websites with Notification Center and OS X Mavericks

Notification Center in OS X Mavericks has an awesome new feature that lets you subscribe to updates from your favorite websites so they'll feed right into Notification Center. For websites that support it, I've found it to actually be extremely convenient. Here's how to get started:

Before starting, note that a website must support updates before you can actually use them. At this time, I don't know many that do but the number should grow as sites start integrating support for the feature. For this example, I'm using eBay.

  1. Launch Safari from the desktop of your Mac running OS X Mavericks and navigate to the site you want to get notifications from.
  2. If you're on a website that supports Notification Center updates in OS X Mavericks, you should see a popup resembling the one below. Click on Allow. (Note that some sites obviously only ask you if you're logged into an account, such as eBay, which can send account notifications to Notification Center.)
  3. That's it. You can now check Notification Center for any notifications.
  4. If you have notifications, you'll see them in the respective section like below.

That's all there is to it. While there seems to be very limited support for this right now, it's one of my favorite features of OS X Mavericks and I really hope other services start supporting it soon. I've found it especially useful if you sell a lot of items on eBay and want to keep up with messages and other interactions without having to check emails or launch web browsers.

If you've had a chance to try out website notifications in Mavericks as well, let us know what you think about them in the comments! And of course, if you've found sites that support them, by all means let us know what ones you've found!

Allyson Kazmucha

iMore senior editor from 2011 to 2015.

26 Comments
  • Hopefully this feature will be used by more sites too. I follow quite a few tech websites and so far none of them offer this function. I wonder if iMore will be the first Sent from the iMore App
  • I think it's better if iMore could just update their app to automatically notify us when new articles are posted. (I believe somebody already raised this after the article for the new version of the iMore app was posted.) Then, leave the website notifications to those who don't have their own app. Sent from the iMore App
  • so far i've only been able to enable this feature with CNN. can't wait for more sites to integrate it also.... Sent from the iMore App
  • Another Mac rumors based site offers it. Them and New York Times I think are all that have, though I want to say MLB does too for scores, but it is the off season, so haven't seen any come across yet. Sent from the iMore App
  • I'm liking this feature a lot more than originally anticipated. I don't have to keep going back to each site to see if something new popped up, but I wonder if that's going to hurt or help their advertising costs in the long run. I hope a site could provide numbers after a decent reporting period. Sent from the iMore App
  • Oh ok I was wondering how that worked! Sent from the iMore App
  • Please can we have this for IOS! Along with actionable notifications. Sent from the iMore App
  • Not sure how I feel about these. I see the use with sites like eBay or sports sites for score updates but do I really need news headlines constantly popping up? I personally don't. Sent from the iMore App
  • Thanks for the tip. I would love this for IOS. Sent from the iMore App
  • Ditto Sent from the iMore App
  • I'd love Blizzard to make use of this. Sent from the iMore App
  • how do we stop getting notifications from the sites we do allow? i get notifications from a site that i want to stop getting them but i don't know how to stop from getting them! lol
  • I'll add that to my list for this coming week ;) but it's in system prefs :) Sent from the iMore App
  • Thanks for the tip. I will try it out and let you guys know what I think about it. Sent from the iMore App
  • Thanks for the infromation.
  • Is it possible to see this feature in another browser? Sent from the iMore App
  • I'm guessing not, but if you have an Android device around and use Chrome you might be interested in PushBullet. It's not quite the same though since it relies on the phone or tablet being on and goes through Chrome, not Notification Center. Sent from the iMore App
  • This is great for sports fans. I have it set up to show me when the score changes on games when I can't watch it. Beats keeping a tab open at all times. Sent from the iMore App
  • I'm hoping more sites roll out support for this in the very near future. It's a great feature and an easy way to keep up-to-date with your favorite sites. Sent from the iMore App
  • i didnt know ios has this fantastic help ! i should try it now Sent from the iMore App
  • I've already set this up. It's a great feature to keep up on hockey scores Sent from the iMore App
  • I've already set this up. It's a great feature to keep up on hockey scores Sent from the iMore App
  • I've already set this up. It's a great feature to keep up on hockey scores Sent from the iMore App
  • I've already set this up. It's a great feature to keep up on hockey scores Sent from the iMore App
  • Oh I had no clue about this feature in mavericks. I will definitely be using it. Sent from the iMore App
  • Great article!
    There is an alternative way: http://neowatcher.com/
    Does anybody knows something about it?