# Gmail Chat Notifications

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmail-chat-notifications/445754>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 17, 2008, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmail-chat-notifications/445754 "2008-04-17T17:53:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![The\_Composer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/898d66/32.png) [@The\_Composer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Composer)\
**Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmail-chat-notifications/445754/1 "2008-04-17T17:53:50Z")

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Gmail chat allows for notification by sound, but I’d rather have a visual notification.

At some point, I must have turned on a control that flashes (in Firefox) the Gmail browser tab when a new chat message is received. For the life of me, I can’t find that setting again.

I’m trying to tell a friend how to enable the visual notification and disable the sound notifications. She disabled the sound notifications, but the visual notifications still don’t appear.

My tab flashes orange when a new message is received.

Anyone know how to do this?

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**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\
**Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmail-chat-notifications/445754/2 "2008-04-17T18:00:36Z")

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I don’t see a setting in Gmail itself for visual notifications; that seems to done in the browser, with no way of controlling it as far as I can see. I wonder if it’s a Java or JavaScript setting somewhere in the browser. Just a WAG.