Desktop notification client using only bash and gdbus.
This is bkw777/notice.sh
Originally a rewrite of vlevit/notify-send.sh
Differences:
- Refactored to remove all the unnecessary external tools (dc, bc, sed)
- Remove unnecessary here-docs (they create temp files behind the scenes)
- Remove unnecessary subshells
- General optimizing and tightening
- Fix background process management for actions
- Remove redundant commandline options
- Combine notify-send.sh and notify-action.sh into single notice.sh
Requires bash and gdbus (part of glib2).
$ sudo apt install bash libglib2.0-bin
$ sudo make install
It's also a single self-contained script that can be run from anywhere without necessarily "installing".
For example, bkw777/mainline includes it and runs it out of a lib dir.
$ notice --help
notice - desktop notification client
Version 2.2
https://github.com/bkw777/notice.sh
Usage:
notice [OPTIONS...] [--] [SUMMARY]
Options:
-N, --app-name=APP_NAME Formal name of the application sending the notification
--app-name="Super De-Duper"
-n, --icon=ICON Icon or image to display
--icon=firefox - basename of *.desktop file
--icon=dialog-information - standard themed icon name
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html
--icon=/path/to/file.svg - or png, jpg, etc
-s, --summary=SUMMARY Title message
If both this and trailing non-option args are supplied,
this takes precedence and the trailing args are ignored.
-b, --body=BODY Message body (note)
-h, --hint=NAME:VALUE[:TYPE] Extra data
Can be given multiple times.
--hint=urgency:0 (note)
--hint=category:mail (note)
--hint=transient:false
--hint=desktop-entry:firefox
--hint=image-path:/path/to/file.png|jpg|svg|...
TYPE is the data type like string or boolean
and can usually be omitted.
-a, --action=[[LABEL]:]COMMAND Action
Can be given multiple times.
LABEL is a label for a button.
COMMAND is a shell command to run when action is invoked.
LABEL:COMMAND button-action
COMMAND is run if the LABEL button is pressed
:COMMAND default-action (note)
COMMAND is run if the notification is clicked
COMMAND close-action
COMMAND is run when the notification closes (whether clicked or expired)
Use in combination with -t0 (never self-expire) to get a behavior
similar to default-action on servers that don't support default-action.
-i, --id=ID ID of an existing notification to update or close
-i, --id=@FILENAME write ID to & read ID from FILENAME
If --id is not used, then ID is printed to stdout.
-t, --ttl=SECONDS Time-To-Live, in seconds, before the notification closes itself
0 = forever
-f, --force-close Actively close the notification after TTL seconds,
or after processing any of it's actions
-c, --close Close notification - requires --id
-v, --version Display script version
-?, --help This help
-- End option parsing
Anything after this is treated as literal SUMMARY text,
even if it looks like an option.
Reference: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/notification-spec/notification-spec-latest.html
(note) Not all servers support all features. Some options may do nothing on your server.
There is also a -% option for internal use to launch the background process to watch dbus for the button presses and run the commands specified by --action
As a convenience, any trailing non-option arguments are an alternative way to supply the summary instead of --summary
This allows to send simple notifications by just: notice this is a message
If both --summary and trailing args are supplied, --summary is used and the trailing args are ignored.
-- ends option parsing, which can be used to prevent text that looks like options from being interpreted as more options.
Example: notice -n dialog-information --this causes an unrecognized option error--
while, notice -n dialog-information -- --this does not cause an unrecognized option error--
All options are optional. You can actually give no options at all and it produces an empty notification.
Reference: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/notification-spec/notification-spec-latest.html
So, for example, to notify a user of a new email:
$ notice --icon=mail-unread --app-name=mail --hint=sound-name:message-new-email --summary="The Subject" --body="Some body text"
(not all notification servers support sounds, so you may not hear any sound)
To update or close an existing notification, you need to know its ID.
To know the ID you can collect it from stdout when it's created
$ notice --ttl=0 Initial Message
37
Update this notification using --id
$ notice --ttl=0 --id=37 Updated Message
Close this notification
$ notice --id=37 --close
Or, --id=@filename automates that
As long as you give it the same filename each time:
The first time, the file will be created and the new ID written to it.
On update, the ID will be read from the file.
On close, the ID will be read from the file and the file will be deleted.
$ f=/tmp/notifcation_id.$$ \
;notice -t0 -i @$f Initial Message \
;sleep 2 \
;notice -t0 -i @$f Updated Message \
;sleep 2 \
;notice -c -i @$f
Example, increase volume by 5% and show the new level,
updating the same notification rather than generating new ones
(set the volume low, paste the command & enter, then up-arrow to repeat the command a few times)
$ notice -i @/tmp/volume_notification -n sound -s "Sound Volume" -b "$(amixer sset Master 5%+ |awk '/[0-9]+%/ {print $2,$5}')"
To add buttons to the notification, use one or more --action=label:command
$ notice -t0 -a "white xterm:xterm -bg white -fg black" -a "black xterm:xterm -bg black -fg white" action buttons
To specify a "default-action", use --action=:command
Action is invoked if the user clicks on the notification but not on any button.
Not all servers support "default-action", so this option may do nothing.
To specify a "close-action", use --action=command
Action is invoked when the notification closes, if not already closed by some other action.
Similar to default-action, in that if the user clicks on a notification, that closes it, and so would trigger the close-action.
But close-action is also invoked if the notification closes itself from timimg out, and is not invoked if the notification closes as part of some other button-action or default-action.
Use with -t0 to get a behavior similar default-action when the notification server doesn't support default actions.
$ notice \
-n dialog-information \
-t 5 \
-a "Button 0:notice Button 0 invoked" \
-a "Button 1:notice Button 1 invoked" \
-a ":notice default-action invoked" \
-a "notice close-action invoked" \
-s "Actions Test" \
-b "message body text"
Quoting complex commandlines within actions can get tricky, but at least some level of nested quoting is possible
notice -t0 -a "simple:xcalc" -a "complex:xterm -bg black -fg white -e bash -c 'echo $PWD ;ls -la ;read -p \"press enter to close\" ;echo bye\! ;sleep 1'" complex action