MenubarNotifier menubarnotifier.py

Alex Glasser September 23, 2014

This is a simple script to display a message in the Mac OS X menubar using PyObjC. Make sure you have PyObjC installed - you can do this using MacPorts or Homebrew.

Call the script with the desired notification as the first and only argument: $ ./menubarnotifier.py "Notification Text"

You may have to add executable permissions to the file first: $ chmod +x ./menubarnotifier.py

This does use NSLog which writes to stderr by default. The way to bypass the logging is to redirect stderr to /dev/null with: $ ./menubarnotifier.py "Notification Text" 2>/dev/null

You will also want to run this in the background so it does not require Ctrl+C to allow you to continue using your shell: $ ./menubarnotifier.py "Notification Text" 2>/dev/null &

Highly recommended: Open your ~/.bash_profile and add/rename the following function:

MenubarNotifier function

mn () { /path/to/menubarnotifier.py "$1" 2>/dev/null & }

Restart your Terminal. This will allow the script to be run like this: $ mn "Notification Text"

...and will not require any redirection or the ampersand.

Feel free to use this code for whatever you want.