If you own a Windows 10 PC and a Windows 10 Mobile smartphone, and you have enabled Cortana on both of them, you may have noticed that, after the Anniversary Update, you started getting all the notifications from your smartphone also on you PC. That's called notifications syncing and it means that notifications are duplicated, or mirrored, between your different devices. That's all done through Cortana and it can be quite a useful feature for some users. However, other people might not like this deep level of integration between Windows 10 PCs and Windows 10 Mobile smartphones. If you fall into this category, this article is for you. Read on and find how to stop the syncing of notifications between your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone and your Windows 10 PC:

What do the notifications synced between Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10 look like?

Before we go ahead with the actual process of stopping the notifications sync between your Windows devices, let's first take a look at what these notifications actually look like.

When an app from your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone sends you a notification, it also gets to your Windows 10 PC. It looks and acts just like a normal Windows 10 notification.

Here's a sample of what a notification banner you get from WhatsApp on your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone, could look like on your Windows 10 PC:

Notifications from mobile apps like the Phone or the Messenger , also offer you the option to send back a response. Like replying with a text message straight from your Windows 10 PC. Cortana would take care of forwarding your message to your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone and then send it to the recipient.

Besides banners, all the notifications synced between your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone and your Windows 10 PC are also listed in the Action Center , just like regular, local notifications.

As we've just mentioned, notifications are synced between Windows 10 Mobile smartphones and Windows 10 PC with the help of Cortana. Without her, this wouldn't be possible.

There are three ways in which you can disable notifications sync, and here they are:

1. S top Windows 10 Mobile to Windows 10 notifications sync by using Cortana on your smartphone

Notifications from your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone couldn't be synced and displayed by any of your Windows 10 PCs, if no information would leave your smartphone. If you are sure that you don't want any other Windows device you own to show you the notifications from your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone, then this is the best method:

On your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone, launch Cortana. A good way to do it is to tap on your smartphone's Search button, or to tap on Cortana's shortcut from the Apps screen.

Tap on Cortana's menu button from the top left corner of the screen. It looks like three stacked lines.

Next, tap on Settings , to the bottom of the screen.

Scroll downwards until you find a settings section titled "Send notifications between devices". It tells you that you can "Let Cortana tell you on your other devices when your battery is low and when you miss a phone call, text, or app notification".

If you don't want that, turn Off the switch below and the notifications you get on your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone will no longer get to your Windows 10 PCs.

If you only want to disable some notifications that get synced between your devices, instead of turning Off the switch, tap on the Edit sync settings button.

Your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone will load a screen where you can enable or disable the syncing of notifications separately for each app you have installed. This way, you can set your Windows smartphone and your Windows PC to sync only notifications about missed calls or text messaged for instance.

Note that any change you will make in the notifications syncing options from your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone will be reflected on all the Windows 10 PCs and other devices you own.

2. Stop Windows 10 Mobile to Windows 10 notifications sync by using Cortana on your PC

You can also use Cortana on your Windows 10 PC in order to stop notifications from your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone from getting synced. To do that, start by opening Cortana. Then click or tap on Cortana's Settings button. You'll find it on the bottom left part of the window.

Scroll downwards until you find the "Send notifications between devices" section. Similarly to what we've seen in Windows 10 Mobile, Windows 10 and Cortana tell you here that "If you've allowed it on your phone, Cortana can tell you on this device when your battery is low and when you miss a phone call, text, or app notification.".

If you want to stop notifications synced between your smartphone and your computer to stop altogether, turn Off this switch.

If you don't want to stop all the notifications from being synced, and you want to stop only some of them, instead of disabling the above switch, click or tap on the "Edit sync settings" button.

You will now see a list with a few notifications sync options, as well as with the devices on which notifications are synced. The options you get here are:

• "Get notifications from this PC on my phone" - if "something happens on your PC" , you will get a notification on your smartphone. It sound good in theory, but this option doesn't seem to work for now. At least for us and our devices.
• The Windows 10 Mobile smartphones on which you have Cortana enabled. For instance, the Nokia Lumia 930 we use is listed here as Windows Phone.
• "Upload notifications from this PC to the cloud" - this option is enabled by default and you should leave it so, because it "helps prevent you from getting the same notification twice".

Click or tap on your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone and Cortana will show you a list of apps from which you can get synced notifications on your PC. You can now disable the ones you don't want to hear from on your Windows 10 PC, by turning the appropriate switches to Off.

3. Stop Windows 10 Mobile to Windows 10 notifications sync by using the Settings app on your PC

If you don't want to fiddle with Cortana on your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone, and you don't want to change any of its settings on your Windows 10 PC either, you can let her sync all the notifications she wants, but set Windows 10 to stop showing them to you.

That's a very easy thing to do, and it implies using the Notifications & actions from the Settings app. So, open the Settings app on your Windows 10 PC. A quick way to do that is to click or tap on the Settings shortcut from your Start Menu.

Open the System settings category.

Select Notifications & actions on the left side of the window.

On the right side of the window, scroll downwards until you find the "Get notifications from these senders" section and, in it, locate your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone. In our case, the Nokia Lumia 930 we used, was tagged as Windows Phone. Once you find your smartphone here, turn Off the switch on its right, so as to disable any notifications from it.

And that's it, from now on, you'll never get notifications from your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone on the Windows 10 PC that you're working on now. However, note that you will have to repeat this procedure on all the Windows 10 PCs and devices on which you don't want notifications to be synced.

Conclusion

Syncing notifications between your various Windows 10 Mobile smartphones and Windows 10 PC and other devices is definitely something useful, but not all users will like it. If you're one of them, now you know how to completely or just partially disable notifications syncing. Leave us a comment below and tell us whether you like this feature, or you don't.