Activate Chrome native notifications

Question

I'm trying to get native notifications to work using Google Chrome (or Chromium) on Ubuntu, but no luck so far.

Things I've tried already:

• Libnotify Notifications in Chrome

  I've runned install.sh too (and a restart of Chrome):

  $ ./install.sh
  Native messaging host com.initiated.chrome_libnotify_notifications has been installed.
  

• Linux Native Notification

• Chromify-OSD

And I remember I've tried another extension as well but I don't remember its name.

None of them work. I keep getting the normal notifications of Chrome itself.

I'm using Google Chrome 34.0.1847.137 on Ubuntu 14.04 x64.

Can someone tell me how to get this working?

Solution

For LibNotify, the JSON file that it installs has the incorrect extension ID. Updating the extension ID to the correct one fixes it.

Go to .config/google-chrome/NativeMessagingHosts (for Google Chrome) or .config/chromium/NativeMessagingHosts (for Chromium). Open up the JSON file in the folder, and notice that in the allowed_origins section, it allows the extension ID gphchdpdmccpjmpiilaabhpdfogeiphf. However, the extension ID (at least in my case, but it should be the same for everyone) is actually epckjefillidgmfmclhcbaembhpdeijg.

To fix this, either replace the incorrect extension ID with the correct one, or add a comma and the correct extension ID after it. I personally chose the latter option, and here's what my JSON file looks like:

{
  "name": "com.initiated.chrome_libnotify_notifications",
  "description": "Libnotify Notifications in Chrome",
  "path": path to the location of install.sh,
  "type": "stdio",
  "allowed_origins": [
    "chrome-extension://gphchdpdmccpjmpiilaabhpdfogeiphf/",
    "chrome-extension://epckjefillidgmfmclhcbaembhpdeijg/"
  ]
}

EDIT: That's not the only change that needs to be made. The extension relies on Webkit notifications, which were deprecated and removed in Chrome(ium) and likely other browsers in favor of HTML5 notifications. Therefore, google-chrome/default/Extensions/epckjefillidgmfmclhcbaembhpdeijg/1.0_0/notify_hook.js needs to be updated. I've written a short script for this, but it breaks most of the standard except for displaying the notification. Replace everything in the file with the following (added basic support for sites still using window.webkitNotifications and (hopefully) improved image support) (permissions support added):

OriginalNotification = Notification

Notification = function(title, properties) {
        if (Notification.permission != "granted") {
                if (this.onError) {
                        this.onError();
                }
                return;
        }
        if (!properties.hasOwnProperty("body")) {
                properties["body"] = "";
        }
        if (!properties.hasOwnProperty("icon")) {
                properties["icon"] = "";
        }
        if (properties["icon"]) {
                properties["icon"] = getBaseURL() + properties["icon"];
        }
        document.getElementById('libnotify-notifications-transfer-dom-area').innerText = JSON.stringify({title:title, body:properties["body"], iconUrl:properties["icon"]});
        var event = document.createEvent("UIEvents");
        event.initUIEvent("change", true, true);
        document.getElementById('libnotify-notifications-transfer-dom-area').dispatchEvent(event);
        if (this.onShow) {
                this.onShow();
        }
};

Object.defineProperty(Notification, "permission", {
        get: function() {
                return OriginalNotification.permission;
        },
        set: undefined
});

Notification.requestPermission = function(callback) {
        OriginalNotification.requestPermission(callback);
}

window.webkitNotifications = {}

window.webkitNotifications.checkPermission = function() {
        return 0;
}

window.webkitNotifications.createNotification = function(image, title, body) {
        if (image) {
                image = getBaseURL() + image;
        }
        document.getElementById('libnotify-notifications-transfer-dom-area').innerText = JSON.stringify({title:title, body:body, iconUrl:image});
        var event = document.createEvent("UIEvents");
        event.initUIEvent("change", true, true);
        document.getElementById('libnotify-notifications-transfer-dom-area').dispatchEvent(event);
}

function getBaseURL() {
           return location.protocol + "//" + location.hostname + 
                   (location.port && ":" + location.port) + "/";
}

Comments

[emi]

The latest version of Google Chrome Stable (59 as now) supports the Enable Native Notifications flag, which works just perfectly on Gnome Shell. It's available via chrome://flags/#enable-native-notifications.

[Louis Matthijssen]

It's working and the CPU usage seems to have solved itself. However, still doesn't work in the application I want (Webogram). But thank you very much for your answer and effort and I'll just wait for Chrome to support native notifications!

[Konstigt]

Please see my comment below, works by default on Chrome 35

[Louis Matthijssen]

Those are not Unity notifications. It's just a new skin for Chrome's notifications.

[saiarcot895]

@Konstigt: It's not that notifications weren't working; it's that the notifications weren't native Linux notifications, and existing solutions (at least the first two links above) used the deprecated method. (I personally don't blame Chrome(ium) for this.)

[umpirsky]

I have no .config/chromium/NativeMessagingHosts folder.

[saiarcot895]

@umpirsky: Did you install the binary that's linked on the extension page?

[umpirsky]

@saiarcot895 I don't see any binary on chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/libnotify-notifications-i/‌​…. Thank

[saiarcot895]

@umpirsky: Just run it as ./install.sh. I believe it expects the terminal it runs in to be Bash, and not just sh.

[saiarcot895]

@umpirsky: That's strange. I made a minimized version at gist.github.com/saiarcot895/a80e0fb8725a1844dc34. If you use Chromium, uncomment the second TARGET_DIR line, and comment the first TARGET_DIR. Place that in the same directory as the install.sh.

[umpirsky]

@saiarcot895 Thanks, but still error gist.github.com/saiarcot895/…