Email, Messaging, & Video Calls Email How to Get Instant Yahoo Mail Alerts of New Messages Find out about new emails as soon as they arrive by Heinz Tschabitscher Writer A former freelance contributor who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997. our editorial process Heinz Tschabitscher Updated on April 04, 2020 Email Yahoo! Mail Gmail Tweet Share Email When we get a new message in our Yahoo Mail account, we like to know instantly. One way is to check the website repeatedly. Another, much more comfortable way is to have your browser do that on its own—with a little help from Yahoo Mail. You can configure some settings on the website to send a desktop alert through the browser whenever a new email message arrives in your Yahoo! Mail account. Here's how. How to Enable Desktop Notifications in Your Browser To get alerts from Yahoo, enable desktop notifications in your browser. Google Chrome Here's how to enable notifications using Google's web browser. Click the Chrome menu button. Click Settings. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Advanced to show more options. Under the Privacy and Security heading, click Site Settings. Click Notifications. Check that the switch next to Ask before sending is on. This setting will activate notifications and give you control over each site you visit. To manually grant permission to a website, click Add under the Allow heading, and then type the site address. Check under the Block heading to make sure Yahoo isn't listed. If it is, click the three dots on the right side and click Remove. You don't have to add sites to your Allow list manually. They'll ask for permission the first time you visit them. Mozilla Firefox Firefox has its own procedure to turn on notifications. Click the menu in the upper-right corner of the window, and then click Preferences. Under the Privacy & Security menu, click Settings next to Notifications. If Yahoo Mail appears on this screen, make sure the permission is set to Allow. If Yahoo Mail does not have Allow next to it, click the pull-down menu and click that option. Safari If you use Apple's web browser, here's how to turn on notifications. Select Safari > Preferences from the menu in Safari. Go to the Notifications tab. Make sure Allow websites to ask for permission to send push notifications is checked. If Yahoo Mail appears in the window above, make sure it's set to Allow. How to Get Instant Yahoo Mail Alerts of New Messages in Your Browser With your browser configured, here's how to have it show an alert as soon as new mail appears in your Yahoo Mail inbox: Open Yahoo Mail in a web browser. Click the gear icon in the upper-right corner. Click More Settings. Click Notifications. Click the switch to turn it to on/blue. You may receive a request to OK notifications from this website. If you do, click Allow. Close and re-open Yahoo Mail in your browser. Keep it open to let it send you notifications. How to Get Instant Yahoo Mail Alerts of New Messages via IMAP To get near-instant notifications of new messages that arrive in your Yahoo Mail account, you can also: Set up the Yahoo Mail account in an email program or mail checker using IMAP (with IMAP IDLE enabled).Make sure the email program is running and set to display alerts for new messages. Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Email Address Sign up There was an error. Please try again. You're in! Thanks for signing up. There was an error. Please try again. Thank you for signing up. Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit