Dunst, A Simple And Lightweight Notification Daemon

Introduction

According to the Dunst website Dunst is a lightweight replacement for the notification daemons provided by most desktop environments. It’s very customizable, isn’t dependent on any toolkits, and therefore fits into those window manager centric setups we all love to customize to perfection.

When I installed Debian, I start from minimal install. So, I don’t have any notification by default. Then I choose Dunst. If you already have other notification daemon and want to try Dunst, Just simply add Dunst to your autostart. The default notification daemon should be overriden by Dunst.

Installation

Dunst is available in the official Debian repository

1

sudo apt-get install dunst libnotify-bin

Then try to run it by dunst & command and then disown. Close the terminal. Open a new one, then test it by sending a notification message.

1

notify-send "Notification Title" "Notification Messages"

Of course the default look doesn’t look like that. It needs to be configured first. Here is my configurations. It’s placed in ~./config/dunst/dunstrc

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54

[global]
monitor = 0
follow = mouse
geometry = "300x60-20+48"
indicate_hidden = yes
shrink = no
separator_height = 0
padding = 32
horizontal_padding = 32
frame_width = 2
sort = no
idle_threshold = 120
font = rissole 8
line_height = 4
markup = full
format = %s\n%b
alignment = left
show_age_threshold = 60
word_wrap = yes
ignore_newline = no
stack_duplicates = false
hide_duplicate_count = yes
show_indicators = no
icon_position = off
sticky_history = yes
history_length = 20
browser = /usr/bin/firefox -new-tab
always_run_script = true
title = Dunst
class = Dunst

[shortcuts]
close = ctrl+space
close_all = ctrl+shift+space
history = ctrl+grave
context = ctrl+shift+period

[urgency_low]
timeout = 4
background = "#141c21"
foreground = "#93a1a1"
frame_color = "#8bc34a"

[urgency_normal]
timeout = 8
background = "#141c21"
foreground = "#93a1a1"
frame_color = "#ba68c8"

[urgency_critical]
timeout = 0
background = "#141c21"
foreground = "#93a1a1"
frame_color = "#ff7043"

Geometry is the size of the notification. 300x60-20+48 means, my notification box has 300px width & 60px height, placed on the right-top of the screen with 20px margin from the right & 48px margin from the top. Negative value in -20 means it’s drawed on the right. If you change the value to positive, the notification box would be drawed on the left of the screen. The positive value in +48 means it’s drawed on the top. If you change the value to negative, the notification box would be drawed on the bottom of the screen. Padding is the margin between the text and the box outline. Frame width is how thick your notification box outline. But I use Debian Jessie now, the Dunst version is too old and hasn’t been supporting frame yet. I will upgrade my Debian Jessie setup to Stretch soon. The font I use in the configurations above is custom and I haven’t uploaded it yet. So please change it with a font you have. format = %s\n%b, %s means summary (the title of the notification), and %b means body (the messages of the notification). \n is linebreak, without it, your notification messages would be drawed on the right side of the title. The format could be improved with markup. For example, make the title bold.

16

format = "<b>%s</b>\n%b"

I didn’t enabled it because my bitmap font doesn’t support bold font. Creating bold bitmap font in 5px width of character is not very rational.

32
33
34
35
36

[shortcuts]
close = ctrl+space
close_all = ctrl+shift+space
history = ctrl+grave
context = ctrl+shift+period

One of Dunst selling point is some actions could be controlled using keybind. Like Ctrl+Space to close the notification popup and Control+Backtick to see the previously closed notification. Dunst also could draw different outline color for each urgency level. In the configurations above I set the low urgency frame to green. The medium urgency frame to blue. And the critical urgency to orange. But again, my version of Dunst doesn’t support frame.

Utilization

Dunst by default handles every notification sent by any applications. But we could playing around with custom messages to send. This actually also works on any notification daemon, not only Dunst. But it looks even cooler if we did it on Dunst.

Showing Time

1

notify-send "Current Time" (date)

Or with formating

1

notify-send "Current Time" (date +"%a %-d %b at %H:%M")

We could add keybind to our DE/WM to call that command. So we could live without statusbar. I use Openbox, so maybe like this

1
2
3
4
5

<keybind key="W-t">
   <action name="Execute">
      <command>notify-send "Current Time" (date)</command>
   </action>
</keybind>

It will send the time info if I hit Super+T.

Showing Now Playing

I use mpd & ncmpcpp, so I could get the music info using mpc

1

notify-send "Now Playing" (mpc current)

Do you know? Ncmpcpp support execute a command on song change in its configurations. So, we could make ncmpcpp send a notification on song change. Just try it. I’m still on Jessie, and again, the ncmpcpp version on Debian Jessie is too old and doesn’t support that command. So, I couldn’t give an example. Maybe the code is like this. Hopefully it works.

1

execute_on_song_change = notify-send "Now Playing ♫" (mpc current)

Any Many Other Possibilities

You just need to use your imagination to unleash your creativity.

And as always, thanks for reading!