How to: change notification (notify-osd) colors in Jaunty

[johnl]

I changed my wallpaper and theme yesterday and was quite happy with it, until one of those cool new notifications popped up in it's default white-on-black color scheme. I couldn't find a way to change it's colors, so I downloaded the source, poked around, and hacked this together. Check the attached screenshots for final results.

default.png - this is what your notifications look like now.
blueish.png, uglyred.png - these are some changed colors using the following howto.

this code is not supported by the notify-osd authors at all. But it's a pretty small hack :)

Follow these steps to build a version of notify-osd that allows you to change the background color/opacity and text color/opacity. Note that this is only tested on the current Ubuntu Jaunty version, 0.9.11

1. download & install dependencies
install basic development tools:
sudo apt-get install build-essential libnotify-bin
get the required libraries to build notify-osd:
sudo apt-get build-dep notify-osd

2. download notify-osd source including any ubuntu patches
note that you should not use 'sudo' for this next command. I am doing this in my '/tmp' directory, but you can do it wherever you please. If you do it elsewhere, make sure wherever you see /tmp below you use your directory.
Get the source:

cd /tmp
apt-get source notify-osd

You should now have a folder named 'notify-osd-0.9.11'

3. download and apply the attached patch file
right click on the attached .patch.txt file. choose to save it in the same directory you fetched the source (in my case, /tmp).

Apply the patch:

cd /tmp
cd notify-osd-0.9.11/src
patch < ../../notify-color-hack.patch.txt

There should not be any errors.

4. build a new notify-osd
Configure and build notify-osd:

cd /tmp/notify-osd-0.9.11
./configure --prefix=/usr
make

There should not be any errors.

5. Test that it works
save the following file as ".notify-osd" in your home directory:

bubble-background-color = 6D84B4
bubble-background-opacity = .85
text-title-color = ffffff
text-title-opacity = 1.0
text-body-color = ffffff
text-body-opacity = 1.0

stop the current notify-osd:
killall notify-osd
start our new notify-osd:

cd /tmp/notify-osd-0.9.11/src
./notify-osd

You should see the following:
reading settings from '/home/<youruser>/.notify-osd'
And the program should stay open. If it says:

** (notify-osd:5373): WARNING **: Another instance has already registered org.freedesktop.Notifications

Then go back to the 'killall' step and try again.

Now, do something to cause a notification. In a new terminal window enter:
notify-send "test" "this is a test"

You should (hopefully) see your notification in white text on a dark blue background.

You can now kill the notify-osd we started earlier by hitting control+C in it's terminal window.

6. Install our new notify-osd
Install our new notify-osd over the current install:

cd /tmp/notify-osd-0.9.11
sudo make install

Now make sure our version is the running version:

killall notify-osd
notify-send "test" "this is a test"



7. Customizing the colors
edit the file ~/.notify-osd to edit the colors. Because this is a quick hack, make sure that each line follows the format "key = value" including the spaces around the equals sign. It's lame, I know.

*-color entries change the color of that item. For example, bubble-background-color changes the notification window color. The value for these entries is a html-style color without the leading "#". E.g,

bubble-background-color = c0c0c0

will give you a light gray window.

*-opacity entries change the opacity (transparency) of that item when compiz is enabled. "1.0" means entirely opaque. "0.0" means entirely transparent (invisible). E.g,

bubble-background-opacity = 0.75

Will give you a window that is 75% opaque.



If you make changes to the configuration file you must kill the current running notify-osd process ('killall notify-osd') before you will see the changes. You don't need to restart it as it will restart automatically next time it is needed.


Hope this is useful for someone!

[Wanas]

That was cool
but is there a way to hack this notify-osd to appear while watching videos (not in a full screen) because pidgin notification wont appear while watching videos in totem

[Labello]

That was cool
but is there a way to hack this notify-osd to appear while watching videos (not in a full screen) because pidgin notification wont appear while watching videos in totem

well it does in vlc.

[Wanas]

well it does in vlc.

Is there a way to make it work for totem and other media players ?

[Pagamim]

hi, im trying to ONLY change the position of it but i could not do it, i just wanted to change from the upper corner to the down corner, maybe its a pretty easy task but i could not do it lol.

can anyone help me?

thanks

[johnl]

hi, im trying to ONLY change the position of it but i could not do it, i just wanted to change from the upper corner to the down corner, maybe its a pretty easy task but i could not do it lol.

can anyone help me?

thanks

Unfortunately notify-osd does not allow you to change the position. This is something I wanted to fix as well but it's not as simple a task as changing the color. Perhaps in the future I will have time to come up with a patch for that :).

[Pagamim]

Unfortunately notify-osd does not allow you to change the position. This is something I wanted to fix as well but it's not as simple a task as changing the color. Perhaps in the future I will have time to come up with a patch for that :).

thanks for the reply :D

i will keep that in mind,

thanks a lot :D

[Vish...]

[...]
this code is not supported by the notify-osd authors at all. But it's a pretty small hack :)
[....]
Hope this is useful for someone!

Hi Johnl,

In case you aernt subscribed to the ayatana mailing list, Your UI modification prefs were discussed on the mailing list and I wanted to bring to your attention this reply from Mark> https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg01337.html

Kindly have a look at https://help.launchpad.net/Code/Review#Proposing%20a%20merge

We can get it merged into the main branch, And supported by the notify-osd authors ;)

[SilverWave]

Thanks, this was one of two posts that helped point me in the right direction with my issues re notify-osd.

My solution was just to reduce the pop-up time.

Its amazing how much that changes my appreciation of the notifications... I have found the annoyance is mainly based on them being on screen too long.

I have created a PPA and it has a notify-osd that is set to 3secs not 10secs.
The best is yet to come…

notify-osd – Now with 70% Less Annoy :-) (http://silverwav.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/notify-osd-now-with-70-less-annoy/)


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:silverwave/apps-0
Lucid

These work for me and my environment...