I was wondering if there was a way to display a notification or something from the command line at a certain time. Like when the clock strikes 4:00pm. It would be nice if it would display it using Ubuntu's notify-osd tool:
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Do you need to know the exact second you are done with work for the day?– TroggySep 9, 2009 at 20:04
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2No. Who gets off at 4:00? I actually need to tell myself to goto bed.– KrednsSep 9, 2009 at 20:09
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@Lucas Aardvark : LOL.– calibanSep 9, 2009 at 20:20
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I get off work at 4:00pm.. then again, I get in to work at 7am most days..– jamuraaSep 9, 2009 at 21:52
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This is great. I was just asking about something like this at askubuntu.com/questions/936645/…– SDsolarJul 16, 2017 at 10:52
6 Answers
As many of the other commenters said, the best way to do this on a daily basis is to use cron, but if you are only wanting to do it for one day, or sporadically, you can use the at
command:
echo 'notify-send "Work day is done!"' | at 4:00PM
You can use at
in a variety of ways, including as a tea timer:
echo 'notify-send "Get your tea!"' | at now + 3 minutes
echo 'notify-send "Meeting in 1 hour with the big boss!"' | at 1pm tomorrow
It's quite useful for those one-off commands.
Check the at manpage for more syntax goodness.
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You can't type the command on the after the invocation of "at." You have to do something like echo 'notify-send "Work day is done!"' | at 4:00PM Sep 9, 2009 at 23:06
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I liked your solution best because it can be easily changed and doesn't require root access to edit
/etc/crontab
– KrednsSep 10, 2009 at 17:08 -
You need add DISPLAY variable to environment to work with
at
orcron
. Type this:echo 'export DISPLAY=:0; notify-send "Enjoy!"' | at 04:00 PM
. Apr 26, 2019 at 22:52 -
Use notify-send to send the notification. Set it up as a cron job.
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3But that doesn't work out of box.
notify-send
requires some env variables whichr are not available from cron by defaualt?– KunokMar 11, 2018 at 0:33
You can send commands to notify-osd like so:
notify-send "Go to bed!"
A crontab for daily notification at 4pm would look like so:
0 16 * * * /home/username/notify.sh
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You might need to set
DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
environment variable before running notify-send. See askubuntu.com/a/346580 Sep 14, 2018 at 11:07
You can always set up a cron job to run a script @ 0400hrs. The tricky thing here, is to find out what command to use to popup a window (ala net send for windows), or to do anything to notify you to go off to bed.
notify-osd doesn't seem to support command-line prompt generation, you might want to try LinPopup2...
if you use a program like anacron (warns you even if the computer is not running so useful more than cron for desktops and notebooks etc ) um then i use Zenity its a notification program here is my site for it with a few examples http://sites.google.com/site/venvirupa/yadandyin
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1Welcome to Super User. External links can break or be unavailable. Please include the essential information within your answer and use the link for attribution and further reading. Thanks. Dec 6, 2016 at 4:23
Looks like you are using gnome-do. There are a few plugins there that can be used - remember the milk (RTM) is one.