Alert is a Growl-workalike for Emacs which uses a common notification interface and multiple, selectable "styles", whose use is fully customizable by the user. * For module writers Just use `alert' instead of `message' as follows: (require 'alert) ;; This is the most basic form usage (alert "This is an alert") ;; You can adjust the severity for more important messages (alert "This is an alert" :severity 'high) ;; Or decrease it for purely informative ones (alert "This is an alert" :severity 'trivial) ;; Alerts can have optional titles. Otherwise, the title is the ;; buffer-name of the (current-buffer) where the alert originated. (alert "This is an alert" :title "My Alert") ;; Further, alerts can have categories. This allows users to ;; selectively filter on them. (alert "This is an alert" :title "My Alert" :category 'debug) * For users For the user, there are several variables to control when and how alerts are presented. By default, they appear in the minibuffer much the same as a normal Emacs message. But there are many more possibilities: `alert-fade-time' Normally alerts disappear after this many seconds, if the style supports it. The default is 5 seconds. `alert-default-style' Pick the style to use if no other config rule matches. The default is `message', but `growl' works well too. `alert-reveal-idle-time' If a config rule choose to match on `idle', this is how many seconds idle the user has to be. Defaults to 5 so that users don't miss any alerts, but 120 is also good. `alert-persist-idle-time' After this many idle seconds, alerts will become sticky, and not fade away more. The default is 15 minutes. `alert-log-messages' By default, all alerts are logged to *Alerts* (and to *Messages*, if the `message' style is being used). Set to nil to disable. `alert-hide-all-notifications' Want alerts off entirely? They still get logged, however, unless you've turned that off too. `alert-user-configuration' This variable lets you control exactly how and when a particular alert, a class of alerts, or all alerts, get reported -- or if at all. Use this to make some alerts use Growl, while others are completely silent. * Programmatically adding rules Users can also programmatically add configuration rules, in addition to customizing `alert-user-configuration'. Here is one that the author currently uses with ERC, so that the fringe gets colored whenever people chat on BitlBee: (alert-add-rule :status '(buried visible idle) :severity '(moderate high urgent) :mode 'erc-mode :predicate #'(lambda (info) (string-match (concat "\\`[^&].*@BitlBee\\'") (erc-format-target-and/or-network))) :persistent #'(lambda (info) ;; If the buffer is buried, or the user has been ;; idle for `alert-reveal-idle-time' seconds, ;; make this alert persistent. Normally, alerts ;; become persistent after ;; `alert-persist-idle-time' seconds. (memq (plist-get info :status) '(buried idle))) :style 'fringe :continue t) * Builtin alert styles There are several builtin styles, and it is trivial to create new ones. The builtins are: fringe - Changes the current frame's fringe background color mode-line - Changes the current frame's mode-line background color gntp - Uses gntp, it requires gntp.el (see https://github.com/tekai/gntp.el) growl - Uses Growl on OS X, if growlnotify is on the PATH ignore - Ignores the alert entirely libnotify - Uses libnotify if notify-send is on the PATH log - Logs the alert text to *Alerts*, with a timestamp message - Uses the Emacs `message' facility momentary - Uses the Emacs `momentary-string-display' facility notifications - Uses notifications library via D-Bus notifier - Uses terminal-notifier on OS X, if it is on the PATH osx-notifier - Native OSX notifier using AppleScript toaster - Use the toast notification system x11 - Changes the urgency property of the window in the X Window System termux - Use termux-notification from the Termux API * Defining new styles To create a new style, you need to at least write a "notifier", which is a function that receives the details of the alert. These details are given in a plist which uses various keyword to identify the parts of the alert. Here is a prototypical style definition: (alert-define-style 'style-name :title "My Style's title" :notifier (lambda (info) ;; The message text is :message (plist-get info :message) ;; The :title of the alert (plist-get info :title) ;; The :category of the alert (plist-get info :category) ;; The major-mode this alert relates to (plist-get info :mode) ;; The buffer the alert relates to (plist-get info :buffer) ;; Severity of the alert. It is one of: ;; `urgent' ;; `high' ;; `moderate' ;; `normal' ;; `low' ;; `trivial' (plist-get info :severity) ;; Whether this alert should persist, or fade away (plist-get info :persistent) ;; Data which was passed to `alert'. Can be ;; anything. (plist-get info :data)) ;; Removers are optional. Their job is to remove ;; the visual or auditory effect of the alert. :remover (lambda (info) ;; It is the same property list that was passed to ;; the notifier function. )) You can test a specific style with something like this: (let ((alert-user-configuration '((((:severity high)) momentary nil)))) (alert "Same buffer momentary alert" :title "My Alert" :severity 'high) (alert "This is a momentary alert in another visible buffer" :title "My Alert" :severity 'high :buffer (other-buffer (current-buffer) t)))