Drowning in notifications

Most desktop environments (KDE, GNOME, Xfce etc) support notifications. Implementations are based on Desktop Notifications Specification.

If you are using a stand-alone window manager (like Hyprland or Sway) instead of a desktop environment, you can still use notifications. You just need a notification daemon such as Dunst, Fnott, SwayNotificationCenter etc. You might already have one installed and running.

automation tasks. It could be: backing up files with rsync or scp, transcoding media with FFmpeg, or bulk resizing images with ImageMagick.

Install

To send notifications from a script, you need the libnotify package.

Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt install libnotify-bin

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -Sy libnotify

Usage

Simple

To send a notification, all you have to do is run notify-send.

notify-send "Hello World"

Exactly what the notification looks like depend on desktop environment or notification daemon. I run GNOME, so for me, it looks like this.

Body

Notifications can also have a body.

notify-send "Hello World" "Please be aware that a notification has been send"

Markup

A limited set of HTML style markup can be used.

notify-send "hello world" '<b>please</b> be <i>aware</i> that a <u>notification</u> has been send'

Tag	Description
<b></b>	Bold
<i></i>	Italic
<u></u>	Underline
<a href="..."></a>	Link
<img src="..."/>	Image

Urgency

You can also set the urgency of a notification.

notify-send -u critical "Important" "Something critically important"

It might not immediately look any different from a normal notification. But setting urgency can alter the behavior. For instance, a critical notification is always shown in GNOME, even when “Do Not Disturb” is on.

Icon

An icon can be set.

notify-send -u critical -i /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/symbolic/status/weather-storm-symbolic.svg "Weather warning" "a storm is comming"

Other

Check out the man page for other options.

man notify-send

Note that not all options are implemented in all notification daemons.