Disable Windows XP Notification Bubbles / Balloons
If you use Windows you might not be overly fond of the little bubbles that pop up down on your Task Bar. You know the ones — warnings about your firewall and unused items on your desktop?
A simple registry edit will stop the bubbles, for all applications. You can watch the screencast to see two ways to make the change. You can either make the edit manually using regedit, a registry editor that comes with Windows. Or you can download a file from Murphy and double-click it. The file will make the change.
You don’t have much to worry about. In fact, you can right-click the file (after unzipping it), select Edit, and you’ll see it’s just a couple lines of text. The change is easily undone. Simply delete the entry from your registry.
The balloons will stop appearing for all applications - only for the user you’re logged in as when you make the change. Log out and back in to test your results.
If you’re comfortable in the registry go ahead and make this entry:
Add a DWORD value in the following key, and name it EnableBalloonTips. Set its hex value to zero.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Not a registry person? Watch the screencast.
I don’t even know if they have bubbles in Vista…
16. April 2008 at 1:37 am :
I can’t wait to do this. My PC is almost useless because of all those bubbles.
THANK YOU!
5. May 2008 at 9:34 am :
Huhh, it’s good to know, because this ‘fcing’ bubble with the You have not enough space came up all the time!!! now it’s much better
9. May 2008 at 8:17 pm :
Thank you sir! I had to do this once upon a time a long time ago and have since re-installed XP on a partition on my mac and had forgotten how to do this. I really don’t need to be reminded hourly that my desktop is cluttered! Who are the nimrods that think that is helpful?
9. August 2008 at 11:14 pm :
Awesome dude!! Thank you so much for posting this. Indeed there are bubbles in Vista (I am using it with the Windows Classic theme that looks like Windows 2000) but I hear that they are less intrusive in the Aero interface.
I shall try the registry value to see if it works well under Vista. Thanks again!
11. August 2008 at 2:14 pm :
I just updated Spybot S&D and bubbles were popping up about every 5 seconds.
There’s no way I would consider getting rid of Spybot, so I had to give your small file a try.
IT WORKED!
Thank You.
11. October 2008 at 3:30 pm :
i want my bubbles back, anybody know how i can get em back
28. October 2008 at 11:37 pm :
Thanks! Those things were driving me crazy.
7. November 2008 at 8:12 pm :
Life without those pesky & irritating bubbles is bliss! Well done!