docs » hs.distributednotifications

Interact with NSDistributedNotificationCenter There are many notifications posted by parts of OS X, and third party apps, which may be interesting to react to using this module.

You can discover the notifications that are being posted on your system with some code like this:

foo = hs.distributednotifications.new(function(name, object, userInfo) print(string.format("name: %s\nobject: %s\nuserInfo: %s\n", name, object, hs.inspect(userInfo))) end)
foo:start()

Note that distributed notifications are expensive - they involve lots of IPC. Also note that they are not guaranteed to be delivered, particularly if the system is very busy.

API Overview

API Documentation

Functions

post
Signature hs.distributednotifications.post(name[, sender[, userInfo]])
Type Function
Description

Sends a distributed notification
Parameters
  • name - A string containing the name of the notification
  • sender - An optional string containing the name of the sender of the notification (in the form com.domain.application.foo). Defaults to nil.
  • userInfo - An optional table containing additional information to post with the notification. Defaults to nil.
Returns
  • None
Source extensions/distributednotifications/libdistributednotifications.m line 81

Constructors

new
Signature hs.distributednotifications.new(callback[, name[, object]]) -> object
Type Constructor
Description

Creates a new NSDistributedNotificationCenter watcher
Parameters
  • callback - A function to be called when a matching notification arrives. The function should accept one argument:
    • notificationName - A string containing the name of the notification
  • name - An optional string containing the name of notifications to watch for. A value of nil will cause all notifications to be watched on macOS versions earlier than Catalina. Defaults to nil.
  • object - An optional string containing the name of sending objects to watch for. A value of nil will cause all sending objects to be watched. Defaults to nil.
Returns
  • An hs.distributednotifications object
Notes
  • On Catalina and above, it is no longer possible to observe all notifications - the name parameter is effectively now required. See https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/10/04/nsdistributednotificationcenter-no-longer-supports-nil-names
Source extensions/distributednotifications/libdistributednotifications.m line 40

Methods

start
Signature hs.distributednotifications:start() -> object
Type Method
Description

Starts a NSDistributedNotificationCenter watcher
Parameters
  • None
Returns
  • The hs.distributednotifications object
Source extensions/distributednotifications/libdistributednotifications.m line 119
stop
Signature hs.distributednotifications:stop() -> object
Type Method
Description

Stops a NSDistributedNotificationCenter watcher
Parameters
  • None
Returns
  • The hs.distributednotifications object
Source extensions/distributednotifications/libdistributednotifications.m line 142