Send desktop notification from command line in MacOS

Today, I am going to show you a tip to send desktop notification from command line in MacOS, which is useful for Mac automation.

To send the desktop notification, we will use the osascript utility.

First, open the terminal then try to execute the following command:

$ osascript -e 'display notification "This message should be showing on the notification"'

You should see this notification showing on your Mac immediately.

Well, we can set a custom notification title, try this command out:

$ osascript -e 'display notification "This message should be showing on the notification" with title "Coding Tips"'

You can even set subtitle for the notification:

$ osascript -e 'display notification "This message should be showing on the notification" with title "Coding Tips" subtitle "blog.petehouston.com"'

or, even better with some sound effects, like this:

$ osascript -e 'display notification "This message should be showing on the notification" with title "Coding Tips" subtitle "blog.petehouston.com" sound name "Pop"'

Sound effects can be found under /System/Library/Sounds directory.

$ ls -asl /System/Library/Sounds
total 7536
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   216K May  9 16:30 Basso.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   394K May  9 16:30 Blow.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   218K May  9 16:30 Bottle.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   202K May  9 16:30 Frog.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   609K May  9 16:30 Funk.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   464K May  9 16:30 Glass.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   297K May  9 16:30 Hero.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   198K May  9 16:30 Morse.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   422K May  9 16:30 Ping.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   458K May  9 16:30 Pop.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   213K May  9 16:30 Purr.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   433K May  9 16:30 Sosumi.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   420K May  9 16:30 Submarine.aiff
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   159K May  9 16:30 Tink.aiff

If you want to add more sound effects, put the file into this directory or ~/Library/Sounds.

Congratulation! Now you know how to send desktop notification from command line in MacOS.

Have fun!