Option to override Do Not Disturb

[joshuamegnauth54]

Android and iOS support allowing apps to bypass DND. This is a useful feature because a user may want to mute notifications but only allow a certain app (such as email or an important messenger) to display notifications.

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A good use case for this is school or work. A user can toggle DND but allow notifications from Slack or an email app. To test, you can try enabling DND then adding an app to the config file do_not_disturb_overrides or you can use notify-send.

In ~/.config/cosmic/com.system76.CosmicNotifications/v1

echo true >| do_not_disturb
echo "[\"SomeApp\"]" > do_not_disturb_overrides

The notification program has to be restarted in order to re-read the config, which is a limitation of cosmic-notifications that I'll try to fix soon.
UPDATE: It turns out that the app does reload the config and it works correctly. I'm not sure why it didn't work yesterday. 🤷‍♂️

pkill -f cosmic-notifications

^COSMIC Session will restart it so it's okay to just close it. You only have to do this if the config doesn't refresh on its own.

notify-send -a DifferentApp Test

This notification won't fire.

notify-send -a SomeApp Test

This notification will display.

Currently, this setting isn't exposed to the end user beyond editing configs. I implemented a settings page for notifications in pop-os/cosmic-settings#1878 which can be amended with this setting in a future PR.

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[garrettjwilke]

initial testing, i am unable to get any overrides working. when do not disturb is enabled, no notifications go through at all.

set dnd true -> set dnd overrides to SomeApp -> restart cosmic-notifications -> all notifications are blocked regardless of overrides

attempted reboot, attempted to enable then disable dnd...all notifications are blocked and cannot determine if this works or not as is

[joshuamegnauth54]

The do_not_disturb_overrides config has to contain an array of strings that matches the app IDs exactly. So something like:

["SomeApp1", "SomeApp2", "SomeApp3"]

And then to test with notify-send:

notify-send -a SomeApp1 Test
notify-send -a SomeApp2 Test
notify-send -a SomeApp3 Test

And to test that other apps don't trigger notifications:

notify-send -a SomeApp4 Test

^The above steps work for me. It's important that the IDs match exactly. Also, /usr/bin/cosmic-notifications must be replaced with this build. Running this cosmic-notifications build standalone doesn't work (or at least is annoying to get to work 😆 ).

[mmstick]

It may not be necessary. I think critical alerts are supposed to be allowed regardless of the DnD setting.

[mmstick]

Though I suppose Android makes notifications configurable per app.

[joshuamegnauth54]

Yep! Urgent notifications can bypass DND, but this covers the case where a user needs notifications muted except for notifications from important apps (e.g. work or school apps).

[garrettjwilke]

i originally did not set the do_not_disturb_overrides correctly...after editing with the correct format, it works as intended.

[maria-komarova]

A better way to deal with the issue is to have per app notifications. Which is a larger question of if it could be easily implemented.

[joshuamegnauth54]

@maria-komarova So, I think I can easily switch this to per app notifications. Would that be preferred instead? I was thinking something like three options that can be set per app:

• Always enabled (App can always disable notifications, even if Do Not Disturb is toggled)
• Enabled (Default; app can send notifications except if DND is enabled.)
• Disabled (App can never send notifications; i.e. mute that app)

All apps default to "enabled" which is the current behavior. Users can allow apps to bypass DND (always enabled) or mute apps so they never display notifications (disabled).

[maria-komarova]

I need time to consider the design and I need to get a few other things out of the way so I'll get back to you on that.