# Mac + MSN Messenger:  How do I stop chat messages from popping on screen?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-msn-messenger-how-do-i-stop-chat-messages-from-popping-on-screen/376785>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 17, 2006, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-msn-messenger-how-do-i-stop-chat-messages-from-popping-on-screen/376785 "2006-10-17T15:32:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2006, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-msn-messenger-how-do-i-stop-chat-messages-from-popping-on-screen/376785/1 "2006-10-17T15:32:50Z")

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I am actually asking this on behalf of a friend as I am not Mac savvy.

She has MSN Messenger on her Mac. When she leaves the computer she will minimize her chat windows. However, when someone send her a message a window temporarily appears on the screen with some of the text the person is writing in it. I have looked over the Windows MSN client and cannot see anything that changes this. Does not happen to me on Windows.

Any ideas?

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**Author:** ![SiouxChief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@SiouxChief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiouxChief)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2006, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-msn-messenger-how-do-i-stop-chat-messages-from-popping-on-screen/376785/2 "2006-10-17T17:15:54Z")

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On MSN Messenger for Mac, if you go to preferences, then click on the Alerts tab, you should see an option to “Display alerts when an instant message is received”. Uncheck that and you should be ok.

There are three other alert options as well: “Display alerts when contacts come online”; “Display alerts when e-mail is received”; and “Play sounds for alerts”