About

GoMacOSNotify is a Go library for sending desktop applications on macOS.

To do this it installs a binary called alerter into a temp directory on your machine. However if you wish to install the alerter binary into a location yourself, you can configure it to use your location instead of it installing it. The location it installs to will be something similar to: /var/folders/kf/tkk3036976b2x37h6sld0cnc0000gn/T/gomacosnotify

Usage

Creating the notification client

Using the installation method

notifier, err := notify.New()
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

Supplying custom installation path

If you don't want this library to install something, you can download the binary here and put it into a location of your choice and then provide the path to that binary.

notifier := notify.NewWithCustomPath("some/path/to/alerter")

Sending a notification

notification := notify.Notification{
    Title:        "Demo notification",
    SubTitle:     "Some information",
    Message:      "Some more detailed information",
}

resp, err := notifier.Send(notification)
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

// check the response here

The response from the send function returns the type of action the user took, and the value of the button they pressed (if any).

ActivationType contains the type of action (timeout, closed, contentsClicked etc) ActivationValue contains the value of the button that was pressed, if applicable. (See the Close Button section for more details)

NOTE: If the user actions the notification AFTER a timeout has passed, the action will not be captured as the Send function would have returned before the users action was captured. Be sure you use a suitable timeout.

Configuration

There are options that can be configured.

Timeout

A timeout (in seconds) can be configured. Some things to note:

• If not configured a default of 10 seconds will be used.
• A timeout of 0 seconds will mean the notification will not disappear until the user actions it.
• When calling the Send function, it will block and not return until either the timeout times out, or the user actions the notification.

err := notification.SetTimeout(5)
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

Close

MacOS notifications support user actions. Currently only closing is supported by this library. To do this, set the CloseText field of the notification to be the text you wish to be displayed to the user. You can then use the response from the Send function, to see if the user pressed the close button.

The following example will create a notification that has a close button with the text ignore.

notification := notify.Notification{
    Title:        "Demo notification",
    SubTitle:     "Some information",
    Message:      "Some more detailed information",
    CloseText:    "ignore",
}

resp, err := notifier.Send(notification)
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

fmt.Printf("action type: %s\n", resp.ActivationType)
fmt.Printf("action value: %s\n", resp.ActivationValue)

// prints
// action type: close
// action value: ignore

Images

You can include a small thumbnail image inside the notification by passing in the path to a png file.

notification := notify.Notification{
    Title:        "Demo notification",
    SubTitle:     "Some information",
    Message:      "Some more detailed information",
    ContentImage: "../RandomImage.png",
}

resp, err := n.Send(notification)
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

Additional action buttons

You can also have a list of custom action buttons to select which will appear in the drop down list of actions on the notification.

notification := notify.Notification{
    Title:        "Demo notification",
    SubTitle:     "Some information",
    Message:      "Some more detailed information",
    Actions:      []string{"Option1", "Option2"}
}

resp, err := n.Send(notification)
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

Influences

This library was influenced by gosx-notifier and notify, both of which are either deprecated or no longer maintained.

The binary installed that makes this all possible can be found here.