SwayNotificationCenter

A simple notification daemon with a GTK gui for notifications and the control center

Features

• Keyboard shortcuts
• Notification body markup with image support
• A panel to view previous notifications
• Show album art for notifications like Spotify
• Do not disturb
• Click notification to execute default action
• Show alternative notification actions
• Customization through a CSS file
• Trackpad/mouse gesture to close notification
• The same features as any other basic notification daemon
• Basic configuration through a JSON config file
• Hot-reload config through swaync-client

Planned Features

• Slick animations 😎
• Other build scripts than a PKGBUILD (debian and/or RHEL systems)

Install

Arch: The package is available on the AUR:

• swaync
• swaync-git

Fedora: An unofficial build is available in copr:

dnf copr enable lexa/SwayNotificationCenter
dnf install SwayNotificationCenter

Other:

meson build
ninja -C build
meson install -C build

Sway Usage

# Notification Daemon
exec swaync

# Toggle control center
bindsym $mod+Shift+n exec swaync-client -t -sw

Run

To start the daemon (remember to kill any other notification daemon before running)

./build/src/swaync

To toggle the panel

./build/src/swaync-client -t

To reload the config

./build/src/swaync-client -R

To reload css after changes

./build/src/swaync-client -rs

Control Center Shortcuts

• Up/Down: Navigate notifications
• Home: Navigate to the latest notification
• End: Navigate to the oldest notification
• Escape/Caps_Lock: Close notification panel
• Return: Execute default action or close notification if none
• Delete/BackSpace: Close notification
• Shift+C: Close all notifications
• Shift+D: Toggle Do Not Disturb
• Buttons 1-9: Execute alternative actions

Configuring

The main config file is located in /etc/xdg/swaync/config.json. Copy it over to your .config/swaync/ folder to customize without needing root access.

To reload the config, you'll need to run swaync-client --reload-config

• positionX: left, right or center
• positionY: top or bottom
• timeout: uint (Any positive number). The notification timeout for notifications with normal priority
• timeout-low: uint (any positive number without decimals). The notification timeout for notifications with low priority
• timeout-critical: uint (any positive number without decimals, 0 to disable). The notification timeout for notifications with critical priority
• keyboard-shortcuts: true or false. If control center should use keyboard shortcuts
• image-visibility: always, when-available or never. Notification image visiblilty
• transition-time: uint (Any positive number, 0 to disable). The notification animation duration
• notification-window-width: uint (Any positive number). Width of the notification in pixels
• hide-on-clear: bool. Hides the control center after pressing "Clear All"
• hide-on-action: bool. Hides the control center when clicking on notification action
• control-center-margin-top: uint (Any positive number, 0 to disable). The margin (in pixels) at the top of the notification center
• control-center-margin-bottom: uint (Any positive number, 0 to disable). The margin (in pixels) at the bottom of the notification center
• control-center-margin-right: uint (Any positive number, 0 to disable). The margin (in pixels) at the right of the notification center
• control-center-margin-left: uint (Any positive number, 0 to disable). The margin (in pixels) at the left of the notification center
• script-fail-notify: bool. Sends a notification with error message if a script fails

The main CSS style file is located in /etc/xdg/swaync/style.css. Copy it over to your .config/swaync/ folder to customize without needing root access.

Scripting

Scripting rules and logic:

• Only one script can be fired per notification
• Each script requires exec and at least one of the other properties
• All listed properties must match the notification for the script to be ran
• If any of the propeties doesn't match, the script will be skipped
• If a notification doesn't include one of the properties, that property will be skipped

Notification information can be printed into a terminal by running G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all swaync (when a notification appears).

Config properties:

{
  "scripts": {
    "example-script": {
      "exec": "Your shell command or script here...",
      "app-name": "Notification app-name Regex",
      "summary": "Notification summary Regex",
      "body": "Notification body Regex",
      "urgency": "Low or Normal or Critical",
      "category": "Notification category Regex"
    }
  }
  other non scripting properties...
}

config.json example:

{
  "scripts": {
    // This script will only run when Spotify sends a notification containing
    // that exact summary and body
    "example-script": {
      "exec": "~/.config/swaync/myRickRollScript.sh",
      "app-name": "Spotify"
      "summary": "Never Gonna Give You Up",
      "body": "Rick Astley - Whenever You Need Somebody"
    }
  }
  other non scripting properties...
}

Disable scripting

To completely disable scripting, the project needs to be built like so:

meson build -Dscripting=false
ninja -C build
meson install -C build

Waybar Example

This example requires NotoSansMono Nerd Font to get the icons looking right

Waybar config

  "custom/notification": {
    "tooltip": false,
    "format": "{icon}",
    "format-icons": {
      "notification": "<span foreground='red'><sup></sup></span>",
      "none": "",
      "dnd-notification": "<span foreground='red'><sup></sup></span>",
      "dnd-none": ""
    },
    "return-type": "json",
    "exec-if": "which swaync-client",
    "exec": "swaync-client -swb",
    "on-click": "swaync-client -t -sw",
    "on-click-right": "swaync-client -d -sw",
    "escape": true
  },

Waybar css file

#custom-notification {
  font-family: "NotoSansMono Nerd Font";
}

Screenshots

I wonder how this would look with some blur 🤔