nwg-notifications 0.3.0

D-Bus notification daemon + notification center for Hyprland and Sway. Claims org.freedesktop.Notifications, shows popup toasts, and ships a slide-out history panel with Do-Not-Disturb controls and optional waybar integration. Replaces mako; runs standalone.
nwg-notifications-0.3.0 is not a library.

nwg-notifications

A D-Bus notification daemon and notification center for Hyprland and Sway, written in Rust.

Claims org.freedesktop.Notifications, shows popup toasts, and ships a slide-out history panel with Do-Not-Disturb controls and optional waybar integration. Built alongside nwg-dock and nwg-drawer to replace mako in the mac-doc-hyprland stack, but runs standalone.

Features

  • D-Bus notification daemon — replaces mako; claims org.freedesktop.Notifications
  • Popup toasts — top-right corner, auto-dismiss, click-to-focus sending app
  • Deep-linking — clicking a notification tells the app to open the specific item
  • Auto-dismiss — popups dismissed when app calls CloseNotification (e.g., Slack read)
  • Action buttons — shows Reply/Open/etc. buttons, emits ActionInvoked D-Bus signal
  • History panel — slide-out from right, grouped by app with collapse/expand
  • Click-outside-to-close — backdrop overlay + Escape key
  • Dismiss controls — per-notification, per-app group, or clear all
  • Do Not Disturb — toggle via panel button, signal, or waybar right-click menu
  • Timed DND — 1 hour, 2 hours, until tomorrow with expiry countdown
  • Waybar integration — bell icon with unread count, left-click toggles panel, right-click opens DND menu
  • Persistence — notification history saved across restarts with --persist
  • Focused monitor — popups appear on the currently focused monitor

Install

Requirements

  • Rust 1.95 or later (pinned in rust-toolchain.toml; rustup picks it up automatically)
  • GTK4 and gtk4-layer-shell system libraries
  • A Wayland compositor with wlr-layer-shell support (Hyprland, Sway)

Install system dependencies

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S gtk4 gtk4-layer-shell

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libgtk4-layer-shell-dev

# Fedora
sudo dnf install gtk4-devel gtk4-layer-shell-devel

make install — three invocations for the binary + a user-scope install-dbus

The binary install has three invocations. The D-Bus service file always lands in user-scope (~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/) regardless of PREFIX — D-Bus user services are per-user by convention, and installing the service file system-wide would break auto-activation for other users on the same machine.

Default — system-wide binary + user-scope service:

sudo make install
make install-dbus

Writes:

  • nwg-notifications → /usr/local/bin/nwg-notifications
  • D-Bus service file → ~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.Notifications.service (no sudo)

No-sudo, dev workflow:

make install PREFIX=$HOME/.local BINDIR=$HOME/.cargo/bin
make install-dbus

Distro-parity:

sudo make install PREFIX=/usr
make install-dbus

From crates.io

cargo install nwg-notifications

cargo install only installs the binary. You'll need to write the D-Bus service file yourself (see D-Bus service below) — it's a ~5-line file pointing at ~/.cargo/bin/nwg-notifications.

Usage

# With history persistence
nwg-notifications --persist

# Force Sway backend (usually auto-detected)
nwg-notifications --wm sway --persist

D-Bus service

make install-dbus installs this file into ~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/. If you're cargo-installing, create it manually:

# ~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.Notifications.service
[D-BUS Service]
Name=org.freedesktop.Notifications
Exec=/home/YOU/.cargo/bin/nwg-notifications --persist

Once registered, the daemon auto-starts the first time any app calls org.freedesktop.Notifications.

Hyprland autostart

# ~/.config/hypr/autostart.conf
exec-once = uwsm-app -- nwg-notifications --persist

Autostart isn't strictly required thanks to D-Bus auto-activation, but it makes the daemon ready before the first notification arrives (avoids a few-hundred-millisecond delay on your first toast).

Signal control

# Toggle notification panel
pkill -f -38 nwg-notifications     # SIGRTMIN+4

# Toggle DND
pkill -f -39 nwg-notifications     # SIGRTMIN+5

# Open DND duration menu
pkill -f -40 nwg-notifications     # SIGRTMIN+6

Waybar integration

Add to ~/.config/waybar/config.jsonc:

"custom/notifications": {
    "exec": "cat $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/mac-notifications-status.json 2>/dev/null || echo '{\"text\":\"\",\"alt\":\"empty\",\"class\":\"empty\"}'",
    "return-type": "json",
    "format": "{}",
    "on-click": "pkill -f -38 nwg-notifications",
    "on-click-right": "pkill -f -40 nwg-notifications",
    "signal": 11,
    "interval": "once"
}

The daemon writes its current state to $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/mac-notifications-status.json and signals waybar (SIGRTMIN+11, which waybar receives as signal: 11) whenever the state changes — no polling.

Theming

Styling is embedded via include_str!; there's no user-writable notifications.css today. If you need to customize appearance, fork the crate and edit assets/notifications.css, or open an issue to discuss exposing it.

Contributing

PRs welcome. main is protected — open from a feature branch. Run make lint (fmt + clippy + test + deny + audit) locally before requesting review.

User-visible PRs add a CHANGELOG bullet under ## [x.y.z] — Unreleased in CHANGELOG.md, following Keep a Changelog.

Background: why not mako?

Mako is great, but:

  1. The mac-doc-hyprland stack wanted a single look/feel across the dock, drawer, and notification center — GTK4 layer-shell surfaces make theming coherent across all three.
  2. We wanted history + grouping + click-to-focus as first-class features, not add-ons.
  3. Writing a D-Bus notification server in Rust on gio::bus_own_name turned out to be less code than expected — no async bridge, no external crate, directly on the glib main loop.

Run nwg-notifications instead of mako, or alongside (they'll race for the name — whichever claimed it first wins).

License

MIT. See LICENSE.