
Google Docs notifications help you to alert with recent modifications, completed tasks, new tasks, comments, or discussion threads. Google Docs notifications have the potential to notify people when they are not on the website which is helpful while doing a lot of other tasks.
Google Docs is one of the best collaboration platforms that can be used to send external notifications. Google Docs notify collaborators of the comments section alone. So how do Google Docs notifications work for other changes made by people?
Let’s dive deep into the article to know how Google Docs notification works, what are Google Docs notification rules, how to turn off Google Docs notifications, Google Sheets notifications, Google Drive notifications, and Google Docs comments email notifications.
Table Of Contents
- Google Docs notification rules
- Google Docs comment email notification
- How to turn on Google Docs notification?
- How to turn off Google Docs notifications?
- Google Sheets notifications
- Google Sheets notifications on computer
- How to turn on Google Sheets notifications on your computer?
- How to turn on Google Sheets notifications on your Android/ iPad?
- Google Drive notifications
- How to turn on Google Drive notifications?
- Google Docs notification using ezNotifications for Docs
- Google Docs email notification using Google Doc Monitor script
Google Docs notification rules
The inbuilt Google Docs notification supports only notification of comments. You can turn on the Google Docs notification of the comments section to get it notified through email. In this way, Google Docs notify collaborators every time a new comment is added, edited, or deleted through an email. Let’s see how to turn on Google Docs comments email notification.
Google Docs comment email notification
A shared Google Docs document has the option to notify the comments done by collaborators. Changes are notified through email. To notify the changes, you’ve to ensure that the feature is enabled.
How to turn on Google Docs notification?
To turn on Google Docs notifications of comments, follow the below steps,
Step 1: Open Google Docs and sign into your account.
Step 2: Navigate to the upper right corner of the Google Docs shared document. Click on the “Notes” icon that says “Comments” on hovering.
Step 3: Click on the “bell” icon that says “Change email notification settings for this document’ on hover.
Step 4: Select “ All” from the dropdown menu.

Selecting “All” from the dropdown menu will enable Google Docs notification for every comment in the document made by collaborators. You’ll receive an email every time when someone inserts comments in the shared Google Docs document.
How to turn off Google Docs notifications?
If you share a Google Docs document with a large group of people, you may find Google Docs email notifications from collaborators inserting comments to be overwhelming. You can turn off Google Docs email notifications to avoid unnecessary notifications.
To turn off Google Docs email notification of comments, follow the below steps,
Step 1: Open the Google Docs shared document in which you enabled notification already.
Step 2: Navigate to the upper right corner of the Google Docs shared document and click on the “Notes” icon that says “Comments” on hovering.
Step 3: Click on the “bell” icon that says “Change email notification settings for this document’ on hover.
Step 4: Select “None” from the dropdown menu.

This will disable Google Docs notifications for comments. You will no longer receive an email notification when someone inserts comments in the shared Google Docs document.
Google Sheets notifications
Google Docs has a great feature for notifying you when another document collaborator makes a change to the document. However, you will notice on all other document types (Documents, Drawings, and Presentations) that the option for Notification Rules is not available.
Google Sheets notifications on computer
The inbuilt Google Sheets notification supports notification of comments and changes. You can receive email notifications whenever collaborators make changes in the shared Google Docs document.
How to turn on Google Sheets notifications on your computer?
To turn on Google Sheets notifications, follow the below steps.
Step 1: On your computer, open Google sheets and sign in to your account.
Step 2: Open a spreadsheet in Google Sheets, and navigate to the top right corner of the sheet’s document.
Step 3: Click Tools > Notification rules.
Step 4: In the window that opens, you can decide “when” you want to receive notifications. You can select either
- Any changes are made
- A user submits a form
Step 5: You can also decide “how often” you want to receive notifications. Select anyone from Notify you with:
- Email – daily digest: Send a daily summary of all changes.
- Email – right away: Send an email for every change.

Step 6: Once done, click Save.
You can now see who makes changes to your Google Sheets spreadsheet, depending on your level of access to a Google Sheets spreadsheet. If you’re an editor of the Google Sheets spreadsheet, you can see the usernames of people who make changes. If you’re a viewer of the Google Sheets spreadsheet, you can set notifications but can’t see usernames.
How to turn on Google Sheets notifications on your Android/ iPad?
Google Sheets notifications feature is not available on Android and iPad. To set Google Sheets notifications, use a computer.
Google Drive notifications
You can also use the Google Drive notifications feature to be notified if
- Someone shares a new file or folder with you.
- You’ve mentioned in a comment or action item.
- Someone requests access to a file you own.
How to turn on Google Drive notifications?
To turn on Google Drive notifications, follow the below steps.
Step 1: Open Google Drive and sign into your account.
Step 2: In the top right corner of the screen, click the gear-shaped icon and then select Settings.
Step 3: In the left panel, click Notifications.
Step 4: There are two ways you can be notified. In the browser section, you can choose to be notified with
- Newly shared items
- Request for access
- Comments, suggestion, and action items
Check the box to choose the way you want to be notified in the browser.
Step 5: In the Email section, check the box to get all updates about Google Drive items via email.

You can uncheck the box to turn off Google Drive notifications.
Google Docs notification using ezNotifications for Docs
As we already knew, the inbuilt Google Docs notification supports only notification of comments. To get notified of all the changes made in your Google Docs Documents automatically, you can use Google add-on ezNotifications for Docs. ezNotifications for Docs will let you be notified of every change made by your collaborators in the shared Google Docs document.
By activating notifications in any Google Docs document, you, editors or even readers can receive an email with a list of people who made changes including the file’s name change based on the subscription plan.
The freemium plan of ezNotifications for Docs supports
- Receiving an email when collaborators modify the document
- Selecting frequency between the hourly and daily rate
- Selecting the hour of the day to be notified for the daily rate
The paid plan of ezNotifications for Docs supports
- Notifying editors
- Notifying commentators and readers
- Getting notified if the file is renamed
You can install this add-on to your Google Docs and use it to get notified if any changes occur in the Google Docs document.
Google Docs email notification using Google Doc Monitor script
You can also use the Google Doc Monitor script to monitor any Google Docs document in your Google Drive account. It sends email notifications to any recipients you want whenever it’s edited or updated automatically. You can use this script for Google Docs notifications.
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And voila! It’s time to get notified of every change that occurs in your shared Google Docs document. Just follow the tricks in this article!
In this article, we have discussed the below topics
- Google Docs Notifications
- Google Docs notification rules
- Google Docs comments email notification
- How to turn on Google Docs notification?
- How to turn off Google Docs notifications?
- Google Sheets notifications
- Google Sheets notifications on computer
- How to turn on Google Sheets notifications on your computer?
- How to turn on Google Sheets notifications on your Android/ iPad?
- Google Drive notifications
- How to turn on Google Drive notifications?
- Google Docs notification using ezNotifications for Docs
- Google Docs email notification using Google Doc Monitor script
Hope you have enjoyed this article !!!