linux - How to get better Skype notifications in Ubuntu?

07
2014-07
  • Will Sheppard

    In Ubuntu, I want to be notified in a customizable way when someone speaks in a Skype conversation (but not in group Chat 'channels').

    The problem is:

    • I have lots of windows open, so I often don't notice when a new one appears in the taskbar, or if its icon changes.
    • The built-in Skype notifications are tiny, and disappear almost immediately, so I don't notice them
    • I tried using this script in the Skype notification options, but it also disappears too quickly: notify-send "%sname:" "%smessage" -i skype-chat (update: notify-send now supports customisation)
    • I tried using pidgin instead of Skype, in the hope its notifications would be better, but it is missing too many features, e.g. listing bookmarked chats above my contact list

    Is there some better notifications package I can use instead of notify-send?

    Or some other solution?

    UPDATE: Ideally a notification window would stay on top of all other windows, and require the user to click on it before disappearing, in order to make sure they have seen it.

    • Answers
  • user1336314

    I typed /alertsoff and muted the group chat. More info - https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA10042/what-are-chat-commands-and-roles

    hope that helps. I am happy.

  • Indrek

    xfce4-notifyd has an option to set its theme, transparency, and time before it disappears.

    I personally had to uninstall the previous notify daemon to set the new one as default...

    If you're using notify osd (gnome-notify), GUI tools to customise it can be found here.

  • SaintWacko

    I had a similar complaint, and what I ended up doing was installing this API plugin, which allowed me to add a Skype account to Empathy. Now I get my Skype messages in a nice Empathy popup, and I disabled my skype popups. One caveat, leave the Skype popups for incoming calls, as Empathy can't handle those. At least, it can't on my Fedora install.

    Note: I'm operating under the assumption that Ubuntu Empathy works somewhat similar to Fedora Empathy. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

  • Eyal

    There's a program called Skype-Wrapper that attempts to improve Skype's notification system in Ubuntu by integrating it into the Ubuntu messaging menu.

    picture of Skype Wrapper from OMGUbuntu

    You can see installation instructions from this article in OMGUbuntu.

    There are additional instructions in the first answer to this question on AskUbuntu (which is my source for this information).

  • Will Sheppard

    I found a similar sort of solution for my IRC client pidgin.

    I built a plugin that calls the following commands:

    # play a sound
/usr/bin/play /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/drip.ogg

# display a popup message
/usr/bin/zenity --info --title "Message received"

    • Related Question

    linux - In Ubuntu, how to get email notifications about (software) RAID problems?
  • Jonik

    I know getting email notifications should be possible, and perhaps even enabled by default... But how to make sure alerts are properly configured, and if, for any reason, they arent't, how to set them up?

    (I think it's not enabled on my machine, because earlier when I had some disk problems it turned out one of the disks had been long been off the RAID, and the one remaining in it got broken...)

    So, instead of periodically checking /proc/mdstat on my workstation to see that all RAID devices are nicely [UU]...

    $ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] ...
md1 : active raid1 sda3[0] sdb3[1]
      195310144 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md0 : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1]
      144448 blocks [2/2] [UU]

    ...how to set it up so that any irregularities are reported automatically by email? Specifically, I mean the situation that one disk "falls off" the RAID 1 array, for one reason or another, which shows up as something like [2/1] [U_] in /proc/mdstat. Also, instead of it sending email to local (root) user, can you configure an arbitrary email address?

    I'm using Ubuntu 8.04 (aka Hardy). Tell me if I should add more details about the workstation or RAID setup.


    • Related Answers
  • TRS-80

    Add MAILADDR [email protected] to /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf, then /etc/init.d/mdadm restart or it'll just start on next boot. There's also a munin plugin if you're running munin with email alerts.

  • 8088

    I found a nice tip closely related to my question, and wanted to share it:

    TomTheGeek: Pop up notification of software RAID problems in Ubuntu

    It's not about email notifications, but as the blog post says, pop-up notifications (like in screenshot below) might be even better when we're talking about a workstation.

    alt text

    I'll summarise the main points here (in case that blog ever disappears). This uses notify-send, so you need to install notification-daemon package. Basically you add this in /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf (along with MAILADDR):

    # display local notification
PROGRAM /usr/sbin/mdadm-notify.sh

    ...and the mdadm-notify.sh script should be something like:

    #!/bin/bash

#get dbus session
eval `dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session`

#show alert
/usr/bin/notify-send -u critical -c device.error -i /usr/share/icons/Human/32x32/status/dialog-warning.png -t 0 "RAID Status" "<b>$2</b>: $1" -h int:x:1250 -h int:y:20
  • Abhinav

    You could write a cron job to scrape the output above and send a mail if something is wrong.