Notification Stuck on Screen in Windows 11: How to Clear It

To clear a notification stuck on screen, select one of its buttons or its close button: reminders, alarms and incoming calls are built to stay until you act on them. If the banner does not respond, open the notification center with Windows + N and select Clear all. If it is still there, restart Windows Explorer from Task Manager.

Some notifications are meant to stay

Apps choose a scenario for each notification, and four of them change how long it stays. Microsoft's developer documentation describes them:

So a calendar reminder or an alarm that sits in the corner is waiting for you to handle it, and goes away once you do.

Ordinary banners close on their own after a set time. If they all stay for a long time, check Settings > Accessibility > Visual effects > Dismiss notifications after this amount of time, the setting Microsoft lists in making it easier to focus. The guide to banner timing explains what that setting does and does not change.

Clear it from the notification center

Read or copy anything you need from the notification first. Once cleared, Windows cannot bring it back, as the guide on recovering cleared notifications explains.

1. Press Windows + N or select the clock on the taskbar.
2. Select the close button on the notification, or the close button next to the app name to clear everything from that app.
3. If that does not work, select Clear all.

These actions are described in Microsoft's notifications guide. If the notification center itself will not open, use the fixes for a notification center that will not open instead.

Restart Windows Explorer

Restarting Windows Explorer reloads the taskbar and the desktop around it. It takes a few seconds and is the next step to try when a banner is frozen and does not react to clicks.

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager.
2. On the Processes tab, find Windows Explorer.
3. Right-click it and select Restart.

The taskbar disappears for a moment and comes back. Open File Explorer windows close; programs in their own windows, such as Word or Chrome, keep running.

Choose Restart, not End task. If you end the task by mistake and the taskbar does not return, select File > Run new task in Task Manager, type explorer.exe and select OK. That is the route Microsoft Q&A advisers give for an accidentally ended Explorer.

If it is not a Windows notification

Some programs draw their own pop-up windows in the corner instead of sending Windows notifications. A pop-up like that is not in the notification center, so Clear all does not touch it.

Check how the window behaves. If it has a taskbar button of its own, or it stays after you restart Explorer, close it from the app itself, look in that app's settings for its pop-ups, or end the app in Task Manager. Save your work in that app first.

A real Windows notification can also be missing from the notification center if the app has Show notifications in notification center turned off. You will find that option for each app under Settings > System > Notifications.

If it keeps coming back

A notification that returns after you clear it is usually being sent again by the app. A reminder for an event you never dismissed in the calendar, or a sync error that has not been fixed, will keep showing up.

1. Open the app and deal with the cause: dismiss the reminder there, finish the update or fix the error it reports.
2. To stop the banner while you work on it, select the app in Settings > System > Notifications and turn off Show notification banners. Its notifications still go to the notification center.
3. Restart the PC and install pending updates from Settings > Windows Update.
4. If banners from every app freeze, run the System File Checker as Microsoft describes, then restart.

If you clear notifications often, keep a copy of what they said. Notification Logger saves the text, sender and time of Windows notifications as they arrive, so clearing the notification center does not lose them.

Frequently asked questions