notify-send.py

A python script for sending desktop notifications from the shell.

About

Libnotify is part of many scripts in the Linux world. It utilizes many of the specified features of the Desktop Notifications Specification and makes them accessible to shell-scripts. It does not however allow to replace an existing notification with the replaces-id. This is a known bug since 2008 and has a patch since 2012. The patch is still not upstream though (2018).

This python script utilizes the notify2 package and exposes the functionality to the shell.

Differences between notify-send.py and notify-send

• In notify-send.py -h shows help instead of being the parameter for hints. For hints use --hint.
• In notify-send.py -r ID and notify-send.py --replaces-id ID exists. In order to replace a notification call notify-send.py with the ID that was returned by the notification to be replaced.
• notify-send.py returns the ID of the newly created notification.
• notify-send.py --replaces-process NAME exists. Every notification that gets created with the same NAME will replace every notification before it with the same NAME. If called with this parameter notify-send.py might block, best to be called with a trailing &.

Installation

Requires python 3.

git clone https://github.com/phuhl/notify-send.py
cd notify-send.py
sudo pip install notify2
sudo python setup.py install

Usage

>$ notify-send.py -h
usage: notify-send.py [-h] [-u LEVEL] [-t TIME] [-a APP_NAME]
                      [-i ICON[,ICON...]] [-c TYPE[,TYPE...]]
                      [--hint TYPE:NAME:VALUE] [-r ID]
                      [--replaces-process NAME]
                      SUMMERY [BODY]

positional arguments:
  SUMMERY
  BODY

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -u LEVEL, --urgency LEVEL
                        Specifies the urgency level (low, normal, critical).
  -t TIME, --expire-time TIME
                        Specifies the timeout in milliseconds at which to
                        expire the notification.
  -a APP_NAME, --app-name APP_NAME
                        Specifies the app name for the icon
  -i ICON[,ICON...], --icon ICON[,ICON...]
                        Specifies an icon filename or stock icon to display.
  -c TYPE[,TYPE...], --category TYPE[,TYPE...]
                        Specifies the notification category.
  --hint TYPE:NAME:VALUE
                        Specifies basic extra data to pass. Valid typesare
                        int, double, string and byte.
  -r ID, --replaces-id ID
                        Specifies the id of the notification that should be
                        replaced.
  --replaces-process NAME
                        Specifies the name of a process that should take care
                        of replacing notifications for this process.

notify-send[.py] as root user

In order to display notifications, even if libnotify or notify-send.py is used from the root user these two scripts are helpful.

#!/bin/bash
username=<your username here>
if [ "$(id -u)" != "1000" ] ; then
    sudo -u $username DISPLAY=:0 DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/1000/bus notify-send.sh "$@"
else
    notify-send.sh "$@"
fi

With notify-send.sh like this:

#!/bin/bash
notify-send.py "$@" &

See also

Also take a look at my notification-daemon inspired by Dunst, but with several improvements, including the possibility of a transparent background and a notification center that stores notifications.