Would you like to learn how to use a group policy to disable notifications when the Firewall blocks a program? This tutorial determines whether Microsoft Defender Firewall displays notifications to the user when a program is blocked from receiving inbound connections.

• Windows 2012 R2
• Windows 2016
• Windows 2019
• Windows 2022
• Windows 10
• Windows 11

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Tutorial GPO Firewall – Disable notifications when programs are blocked

On the domain controller, open the group policy management tool.

Windows - Group Policy management

Create a new group policy.

Windows 2012 - Group Policy Objects

Enter a name for the new group policy.

Windows - Add GPO

In our example, the new GPO was named: MY-GPO.

On the Group Policy Management screen, expand the folder named Group Policy Objects.

Right-click your new Group Policy Object and select the Edit option.

Windows - Edit GPO

On the group policy editor screen, expand the Computer configuration folder and locate the following item.

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Access the folder named Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.

GPO - FIREWALL CONFIGURATION

Access the Windows Defender Firewall Properties.

GPO - DEFENDER FIREWALL PROPERTIES

On the Domain profile, click on the Customize button.

GPO FIREALL - DOMAIN PROFILE SETTINGS

Configure the option named Display a notification as No.

GPO FIREALL - DOMAIN PROFILE NOTIFICATIONS

On the Private profile, click on the Customize button.

GPO FIREWALL - PRIVATE PROFILE SETTINGS

Configure the option named Display a notification as No.

GPO FIREWALL - PRIVATE PROFILE NOTIFICATIONS

On the Public profile, click on the Customize button.

GPO FIREWALL - PUBLIC PROFILE SETTINGS

Configure the option named Display a notification as No.

GPO FIREALL - PUBLIC PROFILE NOTIFICATIONS

To save the group policy configuration, you need to close the Group Policy editor.

Congratulations! You have finished the GPO creation.

GPO Firewall – Disable notifications when programs are blocked

On the Group policy management screen, you need to right-click the Organizational Unit desired and select the option to link an existent GPO.

Windows-2012-Applocker application

In our example, we are going to link the group policy named MY-GPO to the root of the domain.

GPO- tutorial linking

After applying the GPO you need to wait for 10 or 20 minutes.

During this time the GPO will be replicated to other domain controllers.

In our example, we disabled the Windows Firewall notification to the user when a program is blocked from receiving inbound connections.