Sunday, December 5, 2021

Alert notification on Ubuntu Linux about certain task after given time duration

This happens always with me. I boil milk regularly and it always got boiled over. The problem is I cannot stand 10 mins while watching it, not even with phone. Generally I leave the place immediately and start finishing my pending work on the laptop. I tell myself, I am going to check after 5 min but I get occupied in the work and many times I remember when I get burning smell. Not only it is wastage of milk but also the expensive LPG.

Now I have found the solution only because I start working on my Ubuntu laptop after burning the stove, if I would be busy with my phone, this solution would not work and I would have to find some alarm or similar feature.

I run an alert command which opens a GUI pop-up box. The challenge here was, when I first implemented the command, it opens the pop-up but in the same terminal window where command is running. Of course I was working in some other window so I would never know about the pop-up. Now this solution opens the pop-up over any window and I am able to know about my task.

I had to install a package named wmctrl

sudo apt install wmctrl

Now I run the command

sleep 480; (sleep 1 && wmctrl -F -a "top" -b add,above) &(zenity --info --title="top" --text="Watch the Milk")

If I want alert pop up after 8 min. 480 is in seconds . If I need alert after 5 min I use command.

sleep 300; (sleep 1 && wmctrl -F -a "top" -b add,above) &(zenity --info --title="top" --text="My Alert Message")

It opens the pop up with message over any window and it reminds me about the task.



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