Communique

A Linux notification daemon written in Rust using GTK4 and zbus.

• D-Bus notifications interface (org.freedesktop.Notifications)
• Layer shell integration for floating notifications
• Action buttons support
• Urgency levels (low, normal, critical)
• Click to dismiss (for notifications without actions)
• Auto-dismiss timer
• Timestamp display ("X seconds ago" / "HH:MM" after 60s)
• Pango markup rendering for body text
• Icon support (64x64)

You will need to install GTK4/GTK4 Layer Shell dependencies via your package manager.

cargo build --release

./target/release/notifications-rs

For debug output:

RUST_LOG=debug ./target/release/notifications-rs

Create ~/.config/systemd/user/notifications-rs.service:

[Unit]
Description=Notification Daemon
PartOf=graphical-session.target
Requires=graphical-session.target
After=graphical-session.target
ConditionEnvironment=WAYLAND_DISPLAY

[Service]
Type=dbus
BusName=org.freedesktop.Notifications
ExecStart=%h/.cargo/bin/notifications-rs
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical-session.target

Then:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now notifications-rs

Send notifications using notify-send:

# Basic notification
notify-send "Title" "Body text"

# With actions
notify-send -A action1="Accept" -A action2="Dismiss" "Title" "Body"

# With icon
notify-send -i /path/to/icon.png "Title" "Body"

# With urgency
notify-send -u critical "Title" "Body"

# With expire timeout (milliseconds)
notify-send -t 5000 "Title" "Body"

Implements org.freedesktop.Notifications:

• Notify(app_name, replaces_id, app_icon, summary, body, actions, hints, expire_timeout) -> id
• CloseNotification(id)
• GetCapabilities() -> ["actions", "body"]
• GetServerInformation() -> (name, vendor, version, spec_version)
• Signals: ActionInvoked(id, action), NotificationClosed(id, reason)

The daemon uses the Tokyo Night color scheme with CSS in resources/style.css.