My dunst dunstrc

Just a dump of the inline documentation for the EndeavourOS dunst user defaults.

Global Settings

Code sample
    [global]

Display

Which monitor notifications should be displayed on.

I only have one, so it’s an easy choice.

Code sample
    monitor = 0

Display notification on focused monitor. Possible modes are:

mouse
follow mouse pointer
keyboard
follow window with keyboard focus
none
don’t follow anything

keyboard needs a window manager that exports the _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW property. This should be the case for almost all modern window managers.

If this option is set to mouse or keyboard, the monitor option will be ignored.

Code sample
    follow = mouse

The geometry of the window: [{width}]x{height}[+/-{x}+/-{y}]

The geometry of the message window.

The height is measured in number of notifications everything else in pixels. If the width is omitted but the height is given ("-geometry x2"), the message window expands over the whole screen (dmenu-like). If width is 0, the window expands to the longest message displayed. A positive x is measured from the left, a negative from the right side of the screen. Y is measured from the top and down respectively.

The width can be negative. In this case the actual width is the screen width minus the width defined in within the geometry option.

Code sample
    geometry = "0x0-30+20"

Show how many messages are currently hidden (because of geometry).

Code sample
    indicate_hidden = yes

Shrink window if it’s smaller than the width. Will be ignored if width is 0.

Code sample
    shrink = no

The transparency of the window. Range: [0; 100].

This option will only work if a compositing window manager is present (e.g. xcompmgr, compiz, etc.).

Code sample
    transparency = 0

The height of the entire notification. If the height is smaller than the font height and padding combined, it will be raised to the font height and padding.

Code sample
    notification_height = 0

Draw a line of separator_height pixel height between two notifications.

Set to 0 to disable.

Code sample
        separator_height = 2

Padding between text and separator.

Code sample
    padding = 8

Horizontal padding.

Code sample
    horizontal_padding = 8

Defines width in pixels of frame around the notification window.

Set to 0 to disable.

Code sample
    frame_width = 3

Defines color of the frame around the notification window.

Code sample
    frame_color = "#aaaaaa"

Define a color for the separator. possible values are:

auto
dunst tries to find a color fitting to the background
foreground
use the same color as the foreground
frame
use the same color as the frame

Anything else will be interpreted as a X color.

Code sample
    separator_color = auto

Sort messages by urgency.

Code sample
    sort = yes

Don’t remove messages, if the user is idle (no mouse or keyboard input) for longer than idle_threshold seconds.

Set to 0 to disable.

A client can set the ’transient’ hint to bypass this. See the rules section for how to disable this if necessary

Code sample
    idle_threshold = 120

Text

Code sample
    font = JetBrains Mono Medium 10

The spacing between lines. If the height is smaller than the font height, it will get raised to the font height.

Code sample
    line_height = 0

Possible values are:

full
Allow a small subset of html markup in notifications For a complete reference see http://developer.gnome.org/pango/stable/PangoMarkupFormat.html.
strip
This setting is provided for compatibility with some broken clients that send markup even though it’s not enabled on the server. Dunst will try to strip the markup but the parsing is simplistic so using this option outside of matching rules for specific applications IS GREATLY DISCOURAGED.
no
Disable markup parsing, incoming notifications will be treated as plain text. Dunst will not advertise that it has the body-markup capability if this is set as a global setting.

It’s important to note that markup inside the format option will be parsed regardless of what this is set to.

Code sample
    markup = full

The format of the message. Possible variables are:

Variable Represents
%a appname
%s summary
%b body
%i iconname (including its path)
%I iconname (without its path)
%p progress value if set ([ 0%] to [100%]) or nothing
%n progress value if set without any extra characters
%% Literal %

Markup is allowed

Code sample
    format = "<b>%s</b>\n%b"

Alignment of message text.

Possible values are “left”, “center” and “right”.

Code sample
    alignment = center

Show age of message if message is older than show_age_threshold seconds.

Set to -1 to disable.

Code sample
    show_age_threshold = 60

Split notifications into multiple lines if they don’t fit into geometry.

Code sample
    word_wrap = yes

When word_wrap is set to no, specify where to make an ellipsis in long lines.

Possible values are “start”, “middle” and “end”.

Code sample
    ellipsize = middle

Ignore newlines \n in notifications.

Code sample
    ignore_newline = no

Stack together notifications with the same content

Code sample
    stack_duplicates = true

Hide the count of stacked notifications with the same content

Code sample
    hide_duplicate_count = false

Display indicators for URLs (U) and actions (A).

Code sample
    show_indicators = yes

Icons

Align icons left/right/off

Code sample
    icon_position = left

Scale larger icons down to this size, set to 0 to disable

Code sample
    max_icon_size = 32

icon_path = /usr/share/icons/gnome/16x16/status/:/usr/share/icons/gnome/16x16/devices/

Code sample
    # Paths to default icons.

History

Should a notification popped up from history be sticky or timeout as if it would normally do.

Code sample
    sticky_history = yes

Maximum amount of notifications kept in history

Code sample
    history_length = 20

Misc / Advanced

dmenu path.

Code sample
    dmenu = /usr/bin/dmenu -p dunst:

Browser for opening urls in context menu.

Defaults to Brave. I use Firefox.

Code sample
    browser = /usr/bin/firefox

Always run rule-defined scripts, even if the notification is suppressed

Code sample
    always_run_script = true

Define the title of the windows spawned by dunst

Code sample
    title = Dunst

Define the class of the windows spawned by dunst

Code sample
    class = Dunst

Print a notification on startup.

This is mainly for error detection, since dbus (re-)starts dunst automatically after a crash.

Code sample
    startup_notification = false

Manage dunst’s desire for talking

Can be one of the following values:

crit
Critical features. Dunst aborts
warn
Only non-fatal warnings
mesg
Important Messages
info
all unimportant stuff
ebug
all less than unimportant stuff
Code sample
    verbosity = mesg

Define the corner radius of the notification window in pixel size. If the radius is 0, you have no rounded corners.

The radius will be automatically lowered if it exceeds half of the notification height to avoid clipping text and/or icons.

Code sample
    corner_radius = 5

Legacy

Use the Xinerama extension instead of RandR for multi-monitor support. This setting is provided for compatibility with older nVidia drivers that do not support RandR and using it on systems that support RandR is highly discouraged.

By enabling this setting dunst will not be able to detect when a monitor is connected or disconnected which might break follow mode if the screen layout changes.

Code sample
    force_xinerama = false

Mouse

Defines action of mouse event

Possible values are:

none
Don’t do anything.
do_action
If the notification has exactly one action, or one is marked as default, invoke it. If there are multiple and no default, open the context menu.
close_current
Close current notification.
close_all
Close all notifications.
Code sample
    mouse_left_click = do_action
mouse_middle_click = close_all
mouse_right_click = close_current

Experimental

Experimental features that may or may not work correctly. Do not expect them to have a consistent behaviour across releases.

Code sample
    [experimental]

Calculate the dpi to use on a per-monitor basis.

If this setting is enabled the Xft.dpi value will be ignored and instead dunst will attempt to calculate an appropriate dpi value for each monitor using the resolution and physical size. This might be useful in setups where there are multiple screens with very different dpi values.

Code sample
    per_monitor_dpi = false

Shortcuts

Shortcuts are specified as [modifier+][modifier+]...key

Available modifiers are “ctrl”, “mod1” (the alt-key), “mod2”, “mod3” and “mod4” (windows-key).

Xev might be helpful to find names for keys.

Code sample
    [shortcuts]

Close notification.

Code sample
    close = ctrl+space

Close all notifications.

Code sample
    close_all = ctrl+shift+space

Redisplay last message(s).

On the US keyboard layout “grave” is normally above TAB and left of “1”. Make sure this key actually exists on your keyboard layout, e.g. check output of xmodmap -pke

Code sample
    history = ctrl+grave

Context menu.

Code sample
    context = ctrl+shift+period

Low Urgency Notifications

IMPORTANT: colors have to be defined in quotation marks. Otherwise the “#” and following would be interpreted as a comment.

Code sample
    [urgency_low]
background = "#2b2b2b"
foreground = "#ffffff"
timeout = 5

Normal Urgency Notifications

Code sample
    [urgency_normal]
background = "#2b2b2b"
foreground = "#ffffff"
timeout = 5

Critical Urgency Notifications

Code sample
    [urgency_critical]
background = "#900000"
foreground = "#ffffff"
frame_color = "#ff0000"
timeout = 5

Everything else

There’s a lot. See the EndeavourOS Qtile Community Edition dunstrc for the whole thing.