newsflash

A tiny tiny daemon to flash your computer’s lights when a you recieve a notification.

Configuration

For each device, you can configure the total duration of flashes, the amount of flashes executed for each notification, the animation smoothness and the devices that will be flashed.

Configured with a file at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/newsflash.toml (falls back to ~/.config/newsflash.toml if unset), check the example config file for guidance. Changes to configuration are hot-reloaded as long as your system supports inotify.

Installation

Install with pipx :

git clone https://github.com/AKArien/newsflash.git
cd newsflash
pipx install .

A service file is provided for systemd. Please note that if installed with pipx, newsflash will most likely not be in the search path of executables. Either make sure it is in said path, or change the ExecStart of newsflash.service to the path of the pipx executable.

cp newsflash.service $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/systemd/user/
$EDITOR $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/systemd/user/newsflash.service
systemctl --user start newsflash
systemctl --user enable newsflash

Permissions

If running a non-systemd system and the daemon fails to change the brightness, your user may be lacking permissions. Add a udev rule like the following (you are probably already in the video group) :

# /etc/udev/rules.d/90-leds.rules
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="leds", RUN+="/bin/chgrp video /sys/class/leds/%k/brightness"
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="leds", RUN+="/bin/chmod g+w  /sys/class/leds/%k/brightness"

If you have such problems on a systemd system, open an issue and pray someone has an idea instead.