Supercharge your Chrome Notifications with Pushbullet

Relax, you’ll never miss a notification again.

The Chrome OS notification center is a bittersweet beast. On a whiteboard, drawn in magic marker, it makes for an unmatched superpower. Unfortunately for Chromebook owners, developers don’t choose to leverage it as often as they could.

For a prime example, you won’t need to make too many voice searches; official Google services like Gmail and Google+ don’t make use of the notification center. At first glance that may seem like neglect, and you’ll find it can be a touchy subject among Chrome OS evangelists for that very reason. While we eagerly wait for official solutions, there remains a guiding light.

Leave it to the community — meet Pushbullet.

In a single word, elegance. In another, Pushbullet. An app originally designed to push content from your computer to your phone, it has blossomed into so much more. With the recent addition of Notification Mirroring, it can now push your Android notifications directly into your Chrome and Chrome OS notification trays.

Socialites will appreciate the ability to get all their trending activity synced in real time.

Supported notifications types include: Email, social, music, and everything else too. I’ve received notifications from nearly all apps that use them, even Lux when I change my screen brightness (or it auto-adjusts). Google Now isn’t quite as functional as one would like, but luckily the Chrome Team is working on that separately.

As far as fine print goes, Pushbullet cuts through the garbage and fully supports any Android device running version 4.0 or newer. Technology savvy readers will note that the new notification API didn’t set in until version 4.3, but the Pushbullet team assures me that they have their methods for supporting all versions 4.0+. It appears to be a point of pride, and one we can all celebrate.

Time sensitive emails won’t ever be missed again.

Enabling notification sync is easier than a trip to the gym. The hard work is accomplished by installing two apps (one on your phone, the other on your Chrome device) and making sure you allow Pushbullet access to your phone’s notification API. Luckily, the configuration steps are included in the Android app (and here), making life realatively simple. Grab a smoothie.

Download Pushbullet for Android

Download Pushbullet for Chrome

Wait! There’s more — the Pushbullet team is actively looking for feedback to make this feature better. Some ideas include “smart” notifications that can launch the related app when clicked, for example. If you would like to be involved in making that happen, find their community at /r/pushbullet.