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.
• Control-center panel with widgets, notification list, and media controls.
• Toast popup UI with configurable timeouts and styling.
• 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 and gtk4-layer-shell libraries.
• D-Bus session bus.
• Rust toolchain for builds and the installer.
• systemd --user for the installer-managed service.
• Optional external commands used by widgets and watchers:
  • nmcli for NetworkManager toggles
  • bluetoothctl for Bluetooth toggles
  • udevadm for rfkill events
  • pactl for audio subscription events

Installer (recommended)

Clone the repo and run the ratatui installer to perform trial runs, installs, and uninstalls:

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

The installer:

• Builds the release binaries.
• Installs binaries to $HOME/.local/bin.
• Ensures config and theme files exist under $HOME/.config/unixnotis.
• Installs and enables the systemd user unit at $HOME/.config/systemd/user/unixnotis-daemon.service.

Installer UI

Build

cargo build --release

Preview without install

Use the installer’s trial mode to preview behavior without installing user services:

cargo run --release -p unixnotis-installer

Choose “Trial run” and the daemon will temporarily replace the current notification daemon, then restore it on exit.

For manual runs, stop any existing notification daemon so the D-Bus name is available:

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

Open or close the panel using the CLI:

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

Configuration

The default config path follows XDG conventions:

• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/unixnotis/config.toml
• fallback: $HOME/.config/unixnotis/config.toml

If the config file is missing, defaults are used. Theme files are stored alongside the config directory and are created on demand.

Removing widgets

Widgets can be removed either by disabling their flags or removing entries from the widget lists:

[widgets.volume]
enabled = false

[widgets.brightness]
enabled = false

[[widgets.toggles]]
enabled = false
label = "Wi-Fi"

[[widgets.stats]]
enabled = false
label = "CPU"

[[widgets.cards]]
enabled = false
title = "System"

Removing entries from widgets.toggles, widgets.stats, or widgets.cards disables them entirely. For sliders, set enabled = false.

Styling

CSS is controlled by the theme files under the config directory:

• base.css
• panel.css
• popup.css
• widgets.css

The filenames are configurable via the [theme] section (base_css, panel_css, popup_css, widgets_css). CSS changes are hot-reloaded.

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.