If you read our article on KDE Connect and actually went ahead and installed it to display notifications from your Android phone to your Ubuntu PC, so far, so good. But gradually you may have realized that while having mobile notifications on your computer saves some of your precious time, it proves to be a distraction when you are doing work that demands your complete concentration.
So what you do? Simple – you go ahead and disconnect you phone and computer (by disabling KDEConnect). But is it worth disconnecting your devices when all you can do is temporarily disable notifications on your Ubuntu box? You may ask if that is even possible. We say yes. Say hello to NoNotifications – a tool that does it all for you.
NoNotifications
NoNotifications is a simple indicator for Ubuntu to temporarily suppress notifications of notify-osd (notify-send). With it you can easily disable notifications with a simple click.
To download and install NoNotifications on your Ubuntu PC run the following commands in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vlijm/nonotifs sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install nonotifs
Once all the above-mentioned commands are run successfully, the tool will be installed. You can launch it from Unity Dash as shown in the image below.
This will result in a grey-colored circular icon in the top panel. Clicking on it lets you access the tool’s features.
Usage
When you click on the NoNotifications tool icon in the top panel, it gives you two main options: “Don’t disturb” and “Show notifications.”
When none of them are selected (i.e. when you’ve just launched the tool), notifications are allowed, meaning it’s the default state. Clicking the “Don’t disturb” option suppresses notifications and turns the grey icon red.
To allow notifications select the “Show notifications” option. This, as the name suggests, enables the display of notifications and, as an indication, turns the tool’s icon green.
Once you’re done with the tool, click Quit.
Unfortunately, those are the only three options the tool currently provides. This means you can either disable all kind of notifications or enable them. We rElaine that leaves a lot to be desired, like the ability to allow/disallow notifications from selected apps for a set period of time.
Conclusion
NoNotifications is a very basic app, but it’s very easy to use, and more importantly, it’s better than having no control over notifications at all. Of course it won’t be of much help in situations where you require only a certain type of notifications to be displayed. The project is being actively developed, so I’d suggest filing a bug report related to the feature you want. Who knows? The developer might add it soon.
What other features do you want the developer to add to the application? Leave you answer in the comments below.
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Himanshu Arora
Himanshu Arora is a freelance technical writer by profession but a software programmer and Linux researcher at heart. He covers software tutorials, reviews, tips/tricks, and more. Some of his articles have been featured on IBM developerworks, ComputerWorld, and in Linux Journal.
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