zsh-background-notify

cross-platform background notifications for long running commands! Supports OSX and Ubuntu linux.

Do you use oh-my-zsh?

RobbyRussel merged (and tweeted about it) this plugin to the main-line oh-my-zsh. If that's what you're running then just add 'bgnotify' to your .zshrc plugins list and you're all set!

Do you use Prezto?

I do too! Prezto rocks-- and works great with bg-notify! (although there's no included plugin (yet?)).

How to use!

1. Clone the repository:

• git clone https://github.com/t413/zsh-background-notify.git ~/.zsh-background-notify

2. And add one line your .zshrc:

• source $HOME/.zsh-background-notify/bgnotify.plugin.zsh

3. Done!

Requirements:

• On OS X you'll need terminal-notifer
  • brew install terminal-notifier (or gem install terminal-notifier)
• On ubuntu you're already all set!
• On windows you can use notifu or the Cygwin Ports libnotify package

Screenshots

Linux

OS X

Windows

Configuration

One can configure a few things:

• bgnotify_threshold sets the notification threshold time (default 6 seconds)
• function notify_formatted lets you change the notification

Use these by adding a function definition before the your call to source. Example:

bgnotify_threshold=4  ## set your own notification threshold

function notify_formatted {
  ## $1=exit_status, $2=command, $3=elapsed_time
  [ $1 -eq 0 ] && title="Holy Smokes Batman!" || title="Holy Graf Zeppelin!"
  bgnotify "$title -- after $3 s" "$2";
}

source $HOME/.zsh/zsh-background-notify/bgnotify.plugin.zsh

How it works

In zsh you can add a user-hook preexec that runs before executing a command and precmd that runs just before re-prompting. Timing the difference between them gives you execution time!

To check if you're in the background we can use xprop to find the NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW in ubuntu and osascript to run a simple apple script to get the same thing (although slower).

Alternatives:

I like linking.. So here are a few similar alternatives to this script. Most are platform-specific and buggy in some way. (Sure is great to use one script on all of your systems!)

• This reddit post
• zsh-notify plugin for Mac OS X
• dotzsh notify
• zbell