UnixNotis

UnixNotis is a Wayland-first notification system with a control-center panel and toast popups. It includes a D-Bus daemon that implements the Freedesktop.org notification spec and GTK4 frontends for the panel and popups.

Features

• Freedesktop.org notification daemon with history, rules, sound, and DND.
• Persistent DND state across daemon restarts.
• Control-center panel with widgets, notification list, and media controls.
• Toast popup UI with configurable timeouts and styling.
• D-Bus inhibit API for programmatic popup suppression.
• MPRIS media integration with playback controls.
• Hot-reloaded config and CSS for fast iteration.
• CLI control via noticenterctl.

Components

• unixnotis-daemon: D-Bus notification service, state store, history, and lifecycle control.
• unixnotis-center: Control-center panel UI with widgets, media controls, and notification list.
• unixnotis-popups: Toast popup UI for transient notifications.
• noticenterctl: CLI helper to open/close the panel and send control actions.
• css-check: Helper binary used by the center to validate CSS during reloads.

Performance and optimization focus

• Event-driven watchers for toggles and sliders when possible.
• In-process readers for common stats to avoid shell spawns.
• Command budgeting with timeouts, concurrency limits, and jitter.
• Icon and media caching to avoid repeated decoding.
• Watchers paused when the panel is closed to avoid background load.

Requirements

• Wayland session (panel UI requires Wayland compositors).
• GTK4 development libraries.
• gtk4-layer-shell library (pkg-config name: gtk4-layer-shell-0).
• pkg-config for native dependency discovery at build time.
• D-Bus session bus.
• Rust toolchain for builds and the installer.
• systemd --user for the installer-managed service.
• POSIX shell (sh) for widget commands that use pipes or redirects.
• Optional external commands used by widgets and watchers:
  • wpctl (WirePlumber) or pactl (pipewire-pulse / PulseAudio) for volume control and updates
  • nmcli for NetworkManager toggles
  • brightnessctl for the brightness slider
  • bluetoothctl for Bluetooth toggles
  • dbus-monitor for Bluetooth change events
  • rfkill for airplane mode toggles
  • udevadm for rfkill events
  • hyprsunset for night mode toggles on Hyprland
  • hyprctl for night mode IPC control on Hyprland
  • pgrep/pkill (procps) for night mode state/control
  • pactl for audio subscription events

Distro packages

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S gtk4 gtk4-layer-shell pkgconf dbus systemd rust

Arch Linux (optional widget backends):

sudo pacman -S networkmanager wireplumber pipewire-pulse brightnessctl bluez rfkill procps-ng hyprsunset

Getting started

Quick install or trial run:

git clone https://github.com/locainin/UnixNotis
cd UnixNotis
cargo run --release -p unixnotis-installer

Manual build/run:

cargo build --release
cargo run --release -p unixnotis-daemon
cargo run --release -p unixnotis-center
cargo run --release -p unixnotis-popups

Panel control:

cargo run --release -p noticenterctl -- open-panel
cargo run --release -p noticenterctl -- close-panel

Documentation

• Getting started: docs/getting-started.md
• Configuration guide: docs/configuration.md
• Widgets and commands: docs/widgets.md
• CLI usage: docs/cli.md
• D-Bus API: docs/dbus.md

Waybar integration

There is no built-in Waybar module. A custom module works well and is simple to configure. Example snippet for $HOME/.config/waybar/config:

{
  "custom/notifications": {
    "exec": "noticenterctl list-active | awk '{print $3}'",
    "interval": 2,
    "on-click": "noticenterctl toggle-panel",
    "tooltip": false
  }
}

Example CSS for $HOME/.config/waybar/style.css:

#custom-notifications {
  padding: 0 10px;
}

Systemd user unit (installer-managed)

The installer manages the user unit. The unit runs the daemon from $HOME/.local/bin:

[Unit]
Description=UnixNotis Daemon

[Service]
ExecStart=%h/.local/bin/unixnotis-daemon
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

The daemon launches the panel and popup frontends automatically.

Logging

Log level is controlled by general.log_level in the config. Standard RUST_LOG overrides apply when set in the environment.

UnixNotis redacts notification bodies and command output in logs by default. To opt in to diagnostic logging, set UNIXNOTIS_DIAGNOSTIC=1. This enables capped, newline-stripped snippets for debugging (limits are enforced to avoid leaking full content).

To stream logs in the terminal while opening the panel:

UNIXNOTIS_DIAGNOSTIC=1 noticenterctl open-panel --debug verbose

Valid levels are critical, warn, info, and verbose.

For CLI output that includes notification bodies, use --full with diagnostic mode enabled:

UNIXNOTIS_DIAGNOSTIC=1 noticenterctl list-active --full

Development

cargo test
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings

Troubleshooting

• Panel fails to start: ensure the session type is Wayland (XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland).
• Icons missing: verify GTK icon themes are installed and the image hints contain valid paths.
• Widget toggles do not update: ensure the optional external commands listed above are available.