How to customize on-screen notifications?

Question

There was a tool to configure notifications in earlier versions of Ubuntu as described here. I tried to install it in Ubuntu 12.04 too but I failed.

I want to have the notifications dynamically located (e.g. notifications for music player and volume control will be shown at the same place) and to reduce the notification duration.

How do I change settings of notifications?

coversnail · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-06T17:25:52.103

125

There is no official way of modifying the notifications, but many changes can be made to the notifications bubbles by installing a 3rd party patch which allows various changes to be made. More details are available here: http://www.webupd8.org/2012/06/closable-movable-notifyosd.html

To install:

Open a terminal window and enter these commands one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:leolik/leolik 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin
pkill notify-osd

This installs a patched version of the notify-osd package. Then you will need to install the GUI configuration tool, to do this enter these commands one by one into a terminal window:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install notifyosdconfig

To use the congfiguration tool type "notify" into the dash and launch the NotifyOSD Configuration application.

enter image description here

Modifying the Notifications

From this application you can change the colour of the notifications by clicking on the Background Colour box (in the picture below I've turned it a horrible green!).
To change the length of time the notifications appear on screen adjust the value in the Timeout box

enter image description here

The tool also includes other customisations including:

Change font, opacity, size, corner radius
Disable fade out
Close the notifications on click
Enable/disable "use Dash background colour for the notification bubbles"

Changing the position

To change the location that the notification appears you need to open a terminal and enter the following:

gsettings set com.canonical.notify-osd gravity #

the # in the above code should be replaced by a number between 1-6 depending on where you want the notification to appear (3 doesn't seem to work for me though):

1 - top-right corner
2 - middle-right
3 - bottom-right corner
4 - bottom-left corner
5 - middle-left
6 - top-left corner

enter image description here

In the Position drop down box you can choose from Fixed and Dynamic, dynamic gets rid of the gap between the notification bubble and the top dash

edited Jun 06 '12 at 17:25

answered Apr 30 '12 at 12:43

coversnail

6,366

Bravo for this answer!! – jathanism Jun 16 '13 at 18:43
Thanks for this answer. The timeout box is enabled both on my machine and in your screenshot. Do you know how I can enable it? – Vitaly Mijiritsky Sep 14 '13 at 08:28
1

It's important to note that the webupd8 PPA has many other packages in it, so it might be overwriting other packages... – MarkovCh1 Feb 23 '14 at 02:03
23

A bit ridiculous that in 2014 you need to install a bunch of unofficial patches just to configure notifications, something that's a right click away on other OSes/desktop managers. – Dan Dascalescu Nov 12 '14 at 18:53
1

Only 2 works for me in the gsettings schema, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS :( – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy May 06 '16 at 19:39
Is there a place to see the history of the notifications, in case wasn't looking at screen at the time of the notification? – AlikElzin-kilaka May 24 '16 at 10:11
Found something for the history: http://askubuntu.com/questions/105566/is-there-a-way-to-view-notification-history – AlikElzin-kilaka May 24 '16 at 10:18
Anyhow, only once the notification will provide some basic functionality, from opening the app that created them to doing actual stuff, it's a bit redundant :( – AlikElzin-kilaka May 24 '16 at 10:19
Unable to locate package notifyosdconfig – Maykonn Aug 07 '19 at 14:17
2

It's 2019 still waiting for an in-built way to do this. – Bej Nov 06 '19 at 08:13
wish they put this in the official Ubuntu repos – Bas Lamerichs Jan 29 '20 at 11:19
Unable to locate package notifyosdconfig – fudu Jun 01 '20 at 08:47
1

2020 update to my 2014 comment: no progress. Whatsoever. – Dan Dascalescu Jul 21 '20 at 23:14

Boltgolt · Answer 2 · 2016-05-02T16:55:57.133

6

I could not install notifyosdconfig using the PPA on my Ubuntu 15.04, but i got it working by doing the following:

sudo apt-get install bzr libqt4-dev
bzr branch lp:notifyconf
cd notifyconf
make
./notifyosdconf

Which does not fully install it (you won't be able to find it in the dash) but it does work.

edited May 02 '16 at 16:55

answered Jul 14 '15 at 09:55

Boltgolt

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16

This tools provides the same options and does the same, but is a different one from notifyosdconfig. Looks a bit different, seems to be its Qt4 port. A bit more information is here. – tanius Mar 12 '16 at 15:21
1

Super Man , This is perfectly working in ubuntu 15.10 also...Thanks.... – salih kallai Apr 22 '16 at 20:12
worked for ubuntu 17.10. Nice work – Rahal Kanishka Oct 27 '17 at 10:21
No such schema “com.canonical.notify-osd” notify-osd: no process found – fudu Jun 01 '20 at 08:51

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 07 '14 at 19:25

5

In case anyone might come to this question sometime with a Lubuntu distro (or any other of the 'Buntu flavors), please note that things might be quite different there. On Lubuntu, the best and quickest way is to use xfce4-notifyd-config; however, there is no way to have the notification dialog appear anywhere in the top center; merely the four corners are supported. But for those that don't need more, this will be sufficient by far to get the notification dialog out of the way when something else has been placed there and would constantly interfere resp. overlap.

answered Sep 07 '14 at 19:25

syntaxerror

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Thanks for considering us Lubuntu users. After a year and a half, this answer deserves an upvote. BTW, the last sentence with “resp. overlap” isn't very clear. – Anthony Geoghegan Feb 18 '16 at 22:05
2

If your xfce4-notifyd-config settings do not have any effect, it could be because Ubuntu's notify-osd is also installed – then, it will show the notifications, not xfce-notifyd. To fix this: sudo apt-get remove notify-osd and sudo killall notify-osd. – tanius Mar 12 '16 at 14:44

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 06 '13 at 10:14

2

enter image description here

In my tool there are 3 Checkbox options at the end of Bubble tab which is not shown in previous answer's image, these options worked for me, I'll suggest U recheck the procedure of installation of this tool.

answered Jul 06 '13 at 10:14

Gaurav

1,255

That was a year ago - 3/4 years ago Unity did not even exist - it probably just been updated. – Wilf Feb 19 '14 at 01:26

How to customize on-screen notifications?

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