Terminal job notifications in Fedora 22 Workstation

Fedora 22 Workstation’s GNOME 3.16 desktop makes almost everything easy using a standard point and click interface. But one of the best reasons for using it is the power you can also get in the Terminal app. There’s a world of power available through that command line. And the new Terminal job notifications keep you in touch with the command line, even if you’re doing something else.

Sometimes when you run a task at the command line, you may have to wait a while for it to complete. If you’re like me, you probably move to a Web browser, or some other task. Who wants to waste time watching the screen, waiting for their computer? You could go read the news, see what your friends are up to online, or work on that amazing novel you’ve always wanted to write.

But often you’ll do that using an app that covers up the Terminal on the screen. That means you won’t know when your job finished.

With Fedora 22 Workstation, say goodbye to all that uncertainty. Fedora 22 Workstation includes GNOME 3.16’s feature for Terminal job notifications. With this feature, you’ll know when that long-running task is done.

If another app is in the foreground when a long-running job completes in the Terminal, you now get a handy notification.

terminal-notification

Did you see the notifications come in via their handy, less intrusive location on the top bar? This puts you in command of your attention span. You might decide to go back to the Terminal and pick up where you left off. Or maybe you’d rather try to finish writing that cliffhanger in Chapter Seven of your novel

Fedora Project community

12 Comments

  1. Matthew Bunt

    Looks like a handy new feature.

  2. Ryan Lerch

    This is awesome!

    Just a few questions:

    1. Is there a way to turn this off in the settings?
    2. If I am running one command in one Terminal window or tab, and switch to another terminal window or tab to do something, say in VIM, does it still show when the process i first set up finishes?

    • 1) Settings -> Notifications: like any other desktop notification

      2) It will use an in-app notification if the tab is not the active one, but part of the active window. It will use a desktop notification when the tab is not part of the active window.

  3. Jonny Heggheim

    Nice, I am looking forward to this feature! 🙂

  4. F21 KDE User

    Nice. KDE Konsole has had something similar for quite some time: “View –>Monitor for silence/ Monitor for Activity”. Really useful feature if you’re compiling a huge project . 🙂

  5. langdon

    Vaguely knew about this already, however, now that I have F22 installed, I see how awesome it really is. Was transferring a bunch of files, and “whoop,” a notification when it was done. Nice work! Particularly now that the notifies don’t cover what I am typing at the bottom of the screen.

  6. Brian Vaughan

    I’ve noticed this feature is not active on systems which I upgraded from previous versions of Fedora, only on fresh installs. In upgraded systems, I don’t see it referred to in Settings -> Notifications, all of the options there are turned on anyway, and I can’t find an uninstalled package that seems related.

    • Hi Brian, both my systems here are upgrades from previous versions, and I see the Terminal group in Settings > Notifications, which is set “On” here. There shouldn’t be a separate package as this part of the Terminal’s capabilities.

  7. Rick Richardson

    How do I get the notifications to turn off completely?

    System->Notifications only lists:

    Archive Manager, Backups, Brasero, Clocks, Desktop Sharing, Empathy, Evolution, Files, Network, Problem Reporting, Rhythbox, Skype, and Software.

    No Terminal at all. I upgraded from 21.

    • Jonas

      Add this to your .bashrc (assuming bash is what you use):

      export PROMPT_COMMAND=

      • Rick Richardson

        $ type __vte_prompt_command
        __vte_prompt_command is a function
        __vte_prompt_command ()
        {
        local command=$(HISTTIMEFORMAT= history 1 | sed ‘s/^ [0-9]+ *//’);
        command=”${command//;/ }”;
        local pwd=’~’;
        [ “$PWD” != “$HOME” ] && pwd=${PWD/#$HOME\//\~\/};
        printf “\033]777;notify;Command completed;%s\007\033]0;%s@%s:%s\007%s” “${command}” “${USER}” “${HOSTNAME%%.
        }” “${pwd}” “$(__vte_osc7)”
        }

        Good job, Jonas!

        • Jonas

          FWIW, I put this my .bashrc, so I don’t get the notification but still update the terminal window title:

          prompt_command() {
          local pwd=’~’
          [ “$PWD” != “$HOME” ] && pwd=${PWD/#$HOME\//\~\/}
          printf “\033]0;%s@%s:%s\007” “${USER}” “${HOSTNAME%%.*}” “${pwd}”
          }

          Disable notify-send on completed command

          export PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt_command

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