SwayNotificationCenter

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

Note: SwayNotificationCenter only supports Desktops / Window Managers that support wlr_layer_shell_unstable_v1 like Sway or anything wlroots based

Note 2: SwayNotificationCenter does not support third-party GTK3 themes and is only tested with the default GTK Adwaita theme. Usage of any third-party theme might require extra tweaks to the default CSS style file

Demo

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5c054ac3-90bb-483e-a8f2-5af191805f04

Table of Contents

• Want to show off your sick config?
• Features
• Available Widgets
• Planned Features
• Install
  • Arch
  • Fedora
  • Fedora Silverblue (and other rpm-ostree variants)
  • Gentoo
  • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
  • Ubuntu
  • Debian
  • Guix
  • rde
  • Void
  • Other
• Sway Usage
• Run
• Control Center Shortcuts
• Configuring
  • Toggle Buttons
• Notification Inhibition
• Scripting
  • Disable scripting
• i3status-rs Example
• Waybar Example
• Debugging Environment Variables

Want to show off your sick config?

Post your setup here: Config flex 💪

<p> <img height="500" alt="Config" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5993cbb2-a54d-4d1c-9289-b7e2b9d0a09f" /> </p> <p> <em> Example of my config (<a href="https://github.com/ErikReider/Linux/tree/master/dotfiles/.config/swaync">link</a>) </em> </p>

Features

• Grouped notifications
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Notification body markup with image support
• Inline replies
• A panel to view previous notifications
• Show album art for notifications like Spotify
• Do not disturb
• Notification action filtering
• Inhibiting notifications through DBUS or client
• Restores previous Do not disturb value after restart
• Click notification to execute default action
• Show alternative notification actions
• Copy detected 2FA codes to clipboard
• 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
• Customizable widgets
• Select the preferred monitor to display on (with swaync-client command for scripting)

Available Widgets

These widgets can be customized, added, removed and even reordered

• Title
• Do Not Disturb
• Notifications (Will always be visible)
• Label
• Mpris (Media player controls for Spotify, Firefox, Chrome, etc...)
• Menubar with dropdown and buttons
• Button grid
• Volume slider using PulseAudio
• Backlight slider

Planned Features

• Slick animations 😎

Install

Alpine Linux

apk add swaync

Arch

sudo pacman -S swaync

Alternatively, swaync-git is available on the AUR.

Fedora

The package is available on COPR:

dnf copr enable erikreider/SwayNotificationCenter
# Or latest stable release or -git package
dnf install SwayNotificationCenter
dnf install SwayNotificationCenter-git

Fedora Silverblue (and other rpm-ostree variants)

The package can be layered over the base image after adding the Copr repo as an ostree repo:

sudo curl -sL -o /etc/yum.repos.d/_copr:copr.fedorainfracloud.org:erikreider:SwayNotificationCenter.repo https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/erikreider/SwayNotificationCenter/repo/fedora-$(rpm -E %fedora)/erikreider-SwayNotificationCenter-fedora-$(rpm -E %fedora).repo 
rpm-ostree install SwayNotificationCenter

Gentoo

An unofficial ebuild is available in GURU

eselect repository enable guru
emaint sync --repo guru
emerge --ask gui-apps/swaync

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

sudo zypper install SwayNotificationCenter

Ubuntu

Lunar and later:

sudo apt install sway-notification-center

Debian

Bookworm and later:

sudo apt install sway-notification-center

Guix

The simplest way is to install it to user's profile:

guix install swaynotificationcenter

But we recommend to use Guix Home to manage packages and their configurations declaratively.

rde

(use-modules (rde features wm))

;; Include the following code into the list of your rde features:
(feature-swaynotificationcenter)

Void

sudo xbps-install -S SwayNotificationCenter

Other

Dependencies

• vala >= 0.56
• meson
• blueprint-compiler
• git
• scdoc
• sassc
• gtk4
• gtk4-layer-shell
• dbus
• glib2
• gobject-introspection
• libgee
• json-glib
• libadwaita
• gvfs
• granite7

Optional Dependencies

• libpulse (requires meson build options change)
• libnotify

meson setup build --prefix=/usr
meson compile -C build
meson install -C build

Development

Setup and build

meson setup build
meson compile -C build

Set the environment

# Sets the correct environment variables
meson devenv -C build -w .
# Now you can start nvim, vscode, etc in the development environment

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
• Left click button / actions: Activate notification action
• Middle/Right click notification: Close notification

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. See swaync(5) man page for more information

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

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. For more advanced/larger themes, I recommend that you use the SCSS files from source and customize them instead. To use the SCSS files, compile with sassc.

Tip: running swaync with GTK_DEBUG=interactive swaync will open a inspector window that'll allow you to see all of the CSS classes + other information.

Toggle Buttons

To add toggle buttons to your control center you can set the "type" of any action to "toggle". The toggle button supports different commands depending on the state of the button and an "update-command" to update the state in case of changes from outside swaync. The update-command is called every time the control center is opened. The active toggle button also gains the css-class ".toggle:checked"

config.json example:

{
  "buttons-grid": { // also works with actions in menubar widget
    "actions": [
      {
        "label": "WiFi",
        "type": "toggle",
        "active": true,
        "command": "sh -c '[[ $SWAYNC_TOGGLE_STATE == true ]] && nmcli radio wifi on || nmcli radio wifi off'",
        "update-command": "sh -c '[[ $(nmcli radio wifi) == \"enabled\" ]] && echo true || echo false'"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Notification Inhibition

Notifications can be inhibited through the provided swaync-client executable or through the DBus interface org.erikreider.swaync.cc.

Here's an example of notification inhibition while screen sharing through xdg-desktop-portal-wlr

# xdg-desktop-portal-wlr config
[screencast]
exec_before=swaync-client --inhibitor-add "xdg-desktop-portal-wlr"
exec_after=swaync-client --inhibitor-remove "xdg-desktop-portal-wlr"

Scripting

Scripting rules and logic:

. <b>Only one</b> 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 .