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Zsh notify

Desktop notifications for long-running commands in zsh.

From marzocchi·Updated June 11, 2026·View on GitHub·

**zsh notify** is a Desktop notifications for long-running commands in zsh. The project is written primarily in Shell, distributed under the MIT License license, first published in 2012. Key topics include: antigen, applescript, desktop-notifications, iterm2, linux.

zsh-notify

Desktop notifications for long-running commands in ZSH.

Supported terminals

  • On macOS: Terminal.app or iTerm2;
  • On Linux (and possibly other systems): any terminal application should be
    supported as xdotool and wmctrl are used to query and modify windows
    state.

Setup and usage

Prerequisites

macOS

Install terminal-notifier.app (default*)

When using tmux on Yosemite:

reattach-to-user-namespace is required to prevent terminal-notifier from hanging
(see julienXX/terminal-notifier#115 for details).

Linux/Other

Install notify-send (default*) -- available in libnotify, xdotool and wmctrl


* usage of custom notifiers is described in Configuration

Installation

Just clone this repository and source notify.plugin.zsh in your ~/.zshrc,
or see below for instructions on installing with some popular package managers.

Configuration

The behavior of zsh-notify can be modified by using zstyle after
sourcing notify.plugin.zsh.

  • Set a custom title for error and success notifications, when using the
    built-in notifier.

      zstyle ':notify:*' error-title "Command failed"
      zstyle ':notify:*' success-title "Command finished"
    

    The string #{time_elapsed} will be replaced with the command run time.

      zstyle ':notify:*' error-title "Command failed (in #{time_elapsed} seconds)"
      zstyle ':notify:*' success-title "Command finished (in #{time_elapsed} seconds)"
    
  • Change the notifications icons for failure or success. Provide the path to an
    image, or an URL if you are on macOS.

      zstyle ':notify:*' error-icon "/path/to/error-icon.png"
      zstyle ':notify:*' success-icon "/path/to/success-icon.png"
    

    Try this. Wow.

  • Play sounds with error and success notifications when using the built-in
    notifier. Provide the path to an audio file, or the name of an "alert" sound
    if you are on macOS.

      zstyle ':notify:*' error-sound "Glass"
      zstyle ':notify:*' success-sound "default"
    
  • Have the terminal come back to front when the notification is posted.

      zstyle ':notify:*' activate-terminal yes
    
  • Disable setting the urgency hint for the terminal when the notification is
    posted (Linux only).

      zstyle ':notify:*' disable-urgent yes
    
  • Set a different timeout for notifications for successful commands
    (notifications for failed commands are always posted).

      zstyle ':notify:*' command-complete-timeout 15
    

    The default value is 30 seconds.

  • Set application name in notification if set.
    If this value is not set it will strip the name from message.
    (only notify-send).

      zstyle ':notify:*' app-name sh
    

    The default value is ''.

  • Set a expire time in notifications
    (only notify-send).

      zstyle ':notify:*' expire-time 2500
    

    The default value is undefined milliseconds (disabled).

  • Replace the built-in notifier with a custom one at ~/bin/my-notifier. The
    custom notifier will receive the notification type (error or success) as
    the first argument, the time elapsed as the second argument, and the
    command line as standard input.

      zstyle ':notify:*' notifier ~/bin/my-notifier
    
  • Use the time elapsed even when the command fails (by default, notifications
    for command failures are not conditional on the elapsed time).

      zstyle ':notify:*' always-notify-on-failure no
    
  • Set a blacklist of commands that should never trigger notifications, using a
    regex support by grep's extended regular expression syntax:

      zstyle ':notify:*' blacklist-regex 'find|git'
    
  • Enable when connected over SSH, which is disabled by default.

      zstyle ':notify:*' enable-on-ssh yes
    
  • Disable error reporting (or send it somewhere else)

      zstyle ':notify:*' error-log /dev/null
    
  • Force checking of the WINDOWID variable on every command:

      zstyle ':notify:*' always-check-active-window yes
    
  • Ignore checking if the terminal is focused at all:

      zstyle ':notify:*' check-focus no
    

Installation with package managers

Antigen

Add antigen bundle marzocchi/zsh-notify to your .zshrc with your other
bundle commands.

Antigen will handle cloning the plugin for you automatically the next time you
start zsh. You can also add the plugin to a running zsh with antigen bundle marzocchi/zsh-notify for testing before adding it to your .zshrc.

Fig

Fig adds apps, shortcuts, and autocomplete to your existing terminal.

Install zsh-notify in just one click.

<a href="https://fig.io/plugins/other/zsh-notify_marzocchi" target="_blank"><img src="https://fig.io/badges/install-with-fig.svg" /></a>

Oh-My-Zsh

  1. git clone git@github.com:marzocchi/zsh-notify.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/notify
  2. Add zsh-notify to your plugin list - edit ~/.zshrc and change plugins=(...) to plugins=(... notify)

Note: when cloning, specify the target directory as notify since
Oh-My-Zsh expects the plugin's initialization file to have the same name as
it's directory.

Zgen

Add zgen load marzocchi/zsh-notify to your .zshrc file in the same function
you're doing your other zgen load calls in.

Contributors

Showing top 12 contributors by commit count.

View all contributors on GitHub →

This article is auto-generated from marzocchi/zsh-notify via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/14/2026