dunst - Man Page

dunst [-conf file] [-verbosity v] [-print] [--startup_notification]

Dunst is a highly configurable and lightweight notification daemon.

-h/-help/--help

List all command line flags

-conf/-config file

Use alternative config file. This disables the search for other config files. If it cannot be opened, dunst will issue a warning and fall back on its internal defaults. (Hint: `dunst -conf - </dev/null` can be used to enforce the defaults, i.e. for testing)

-v/-version/--version

Print version information.

-verbosity (values: 'crit', 'warn', 'mesg', 'info', 'debug' default 'mesg')

Do not display log messages, which have lower precedence than specified verbosity. This won't affect printing notifications on the terminal. Use the '-print' option for this.

-print/--print

Print notifications to stdout. This might be useful for logging, setting up rules or using the output in other scripts.

-startup_notification/--startup_notification

Display a notification on startup.

A default configuration file is included (usually /etc/xdg/dunst/dunstrc) and serves as the least important configuration file. Note: this was previously /usr/share/dunst/dunstrc. You can edit this file to change the system-wide defaults or copy it to a more important location to override its settings. See the Files section for more details on where dunst searches for its configuration files and how settings get applied.

See dunst(5) for all possible settings.

Dunst can be paused via the `dunstctl set-paused true` command. To unpause dunst use `dunstctl set-paused false`. Another way is to send SIGUSR1 and SIGUSR2 to pause and unpause respectively. Pausing using dunstctl is recommended over using signals, because the meaning of the signals isn't stable and might change in the future.

When paused, dunst won't display any notifications, but keeps all notifications in a queue. This can for example be wrapped around a screen locker (i3lock, slock) to prevent flickering of notifications through the lock, and to read all missed notifications after returning to the computer.

These are the base directories dunst searches for configuration files in descending order of importance:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME

This is the most important directory. ($HOME/.config if unset or empty)

$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS

This, like $PATH for instance, is a :-separated list of base directories in descending order of importance. (/etc/xdg if unset or empty)

Dunst will search these directories for the following relative file paths:

dunst/dunstrc

This is the base config and as such the least important in a particular base directory.

dunst/dunstrc.d/*.conf

These are "drop-ins" (mind the ".d" suffix of the directory). They are more important than the base dunstrc in the parent directory, as they are considered to be small snippets to override settings. The last in lexical order is the most important one, so you can easily change the order by renaming them. A common approach to naming drop-ins is to prefix them with numbers, i.e.:

    00-least-important.conf
    01-foo.conf
    20-bar.conf
    99-most-important.conf

Only files with the .conf suffix will be read.

Only settings from the last base config the corresponding drop-ins get applied. So if a dunstrc is first found in ~/.config/dunst/dunstrc, drop-ins will be searched in ~/.config/dunst/dunstrc.d/*. Settings in more important files override those in less important ones.

Written by Sascha Kruse <knopwob@googlemail.com>

Bugs and suggestions should be reported on GitHub at https://github.com/dunst-project/dunst/issues

Copyright 2013 Sascha Kruse and contributors (see LICENSE for licensing information)

If you feel that copyrights are violated, please send me an email.

dunst(5), dunstctl(1), dmenu(1), notify-send(1)

dunst(5).