Windows 10 Action Center doesn't show notification history

Question

Windows 10 periodically displays notification pop-ups with a timed dissolve (they're called "toasts" in some other UX's, not sure about Windows) in the lower-right corner of the screen.

They're frequently about software updates (both for first-party and third-party drivers and applications), the status of my RAID array, and various "tips-and-tricks" sort of things.

The problem is that they frequently fire when I'm not close to my desk. I hear a notification sound, look at the screen, see the toast box in the corner, hustle over to my desk... and the thing fades away, usually right before I can see more than "update recommended" and am left scratching my head as to what it's about.

For instance, a few minutes ago I got a toast that, from a few feet away, I could clearly see by the logo was something from Nvidia. It faded from view before I could read it. Supposedly clicking the "Action Center" button shows you notification history, but all I see is this:

(Note: the blank area is just cut out to make the screenshot smaller, there is nothing between "Monday" and "Collapse"):

I have the following settings in "Notifications & Actions":

Are the seven repetitions of EzUpdt.exe possibly to blame? (From searching, this is apparently an updater from ASUS, my motherboard manufacturer; I haven't found anything about multiple copies being present, though.) I've tried turning all their notifications off, or all but one off, but still, faded notifications aren't appearing in the Action Center.

I have checked Event Viewer, even immediately after a toast fades away, but haven't found any sign of almost all of these. (Those that I can find, I find because I know what application created the toast and there's a logged message from the application about the event. But there appears to be no place I can look to just see the last thing that notified, and many of the things that notify do not seem to log at all.)

Most of the answered questions here are about clearing away excessive notifications in Action Center, or hiding them completely. I have the opposite problem, — disappearing notifications that I want — and I'd like to know how to fix it.

(Apologies if I've used incorrect nomenclature—I'm a Unix sysadmin, so Windows is very unfamiliar territory to me. I've tried to be a bit over-verbose to make it clear what's going on, even if I'm using the wrong words to describe it.)

—

Details: I'm running Windows 10 Pro version 1607 (Anniversary Update), on a custom-built machine with an Intel Core i7 6700K 4.0 GHz quad core 8MB cache running on an Asus Z170-A motherboard, 32 GB DDR4, an EVGA GTX 1080, running on two 1TB SSD's (mirrored) and five 3TB hard disks in RAID 5.

I'm running as a user with administrator privileges.

Solution

I'm asking about why the notification "toasts" (again, I don't know the Windows terminology) are never making it into the Action Center in the first place.

The toast notifications are transient by definition, so they vanish after a bit of time, unless they require action.

From MS:

"A toast notification is a transient message to the user that contains relevant, time-sensitive information and provides quick access to related content in an app."

It's up to the app's developers to pick the notification type. Since the Action Center is an extension of the toast notification system that existed in Windows previously (since like XP), notifications triggered using old APIs/methods will act like they used to, which includes not being added to the Action Center list.

You can control how long transient toast notifications stay visible via Settings -> Ease of Access -> Other options -> Show notifications for, where you can set them to last onscreen for up to 5 minutes.

Comments

[Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007]

While there's lots of description here, I'm not sure exactly what you're asking us? Have you seen View past notifications in Windows 10? yet? Why not simply turn up the time they display for via Settings (you can set them to stay for up to 5 minutes)?

[Trey]

@Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 I have. I'm not asking about the notifications in the Action Center, as that question was, I'm asking about why the notification "toasts" (again, I don't know the Windows terminology) are never making it into the Action Center in the first place. Basically, if I'm not sitting in front of the machine when the notification happens, I will not have a chance to read it ever. I'm not asking, like the other question, how to refer back to it later after I have had a chance to read it.

[Trey]

But this doesn't explain why nothing appears in Action Center, except for the occasional Cortana message like the Valentine's Day one in the screenshot above. For instance, I have Twitter turned on as the screenshot shows; I get toasts about Twitter; screenshots from Microsoft show Twitter notifications in Action Center. But I don't see anything from Twitter in Action Center. It seems like something is blocking the injection of notifications into Action Center.