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Notifications

Show desktop notifications on the machine running System Bridge from the web client, the terminal, Home Assistant or the API.

System Bridge shows notifications through your desktop’s own notifications, so they look and behave like any other app’s. Use them for things like a backup finishing, a door opening, or a reminder to take a break.

Sending one

In the web client

  1. Open the System page in the web client and scroll to Notifications.
  2. Enter a Title and Message.
  3. Optionally add:
    • Icon: the path to an image on that machine.
    • Link: a URL to open when the notification is clicked.
    • Sound: the path to a sound file on that machine.
    • Urgency: low, normal or critical. Critical notifications stay until they’re dismissed. Linux only.
    • Buttons: up to 3, each with an id and a label. Linux and Windows only.
  4. Select Send. Clear empties the form.

From the terminal

system-bridge client notification --title "Backup finished" --message "All files were copied"

The CLI also takes --icon, --sound, --action-url and --action-path.

From Home Assistant

The integration can send notifications to your machine, so an automation can tell you when something happens at home. See Home Assistant and the integration’s documentation for the action to use.

From your own code or an agent

  • Send NOTIFICATION over the WebSocket. It also takes a duration in milliseconds, an actionPath to open a file or folder when clicked, an urgency, and up to 3 buttons.
  • Agents can use the MCP server’s system_bridge_send_notification tool.

Following a notification

Every connected client gets a NOTIFICATION_SENT event when System Bridge sends a notification, with its id, title, message and buttons, whoever sent it. The events below carry the same id, so a notification can be followed from being sent to being clicked or closed, even one sent from Home Assistant, which gets no id back. The web client lists the recent ones this way, under Notifications on the System page.

Buttons, clicks and dismissing

On Linux and Windows, a notification can have up to 3 buttons, such as Snooze and Done. When one is pressed, or the notification itself is clicked, every connected client gets a NOTIFICATION_ACTION event with the notification’s id and which button it was. So an automation can react to the answer. On Linux, a NOTIFICATION_CLOSED event follows when it closes, saying whether it expired or was dismissed. Windows sends no event when a notification closes.

Clients can also close a notification they sent with NOTIFICATION_DISMISS, such as once the door it was about has closed again.

Set urgency to critical for a notification that stays until it’s dismissed, or low for one that matters less. How each looks is up to your notification daemon.

What each platform supports

Linux Windows
Title and message Yes Yes
Icon An icon name, such as dialog-information, or a path to an image A path to an image
Duration Shown for the time you set, if your notification daemon allows it Short, or long from 7 seconds
Open a link or path when clicked Yes No
Sound Played with paplay or aplay Windows plays its own notification sound
Urgency Yes No
Buttons, and events when clicked Yes Yes
Event when closed Yes No
Event when sent Yes Yes
Dismissing Yes No

On Linux, notifications need a notification daemon, which most desktops include.

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