mako(5) File Formats Manual mako(5)

mako - configuration file

The config file is located at ~/.config/mako/config or at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mako/config. Option lines can be specified to configure mako like so:

key=value

Empty lines and lines that begin with # are ignored.

max-history=n

Set maximum number of expired notifications to keep in the history buffer to n. If the buffer is full, newly expired notifications replace the oldest ones. If 0, history is disabled.

Default: 5

sort=+/-time | +/-priority

Sorts incoming notifications by time and/or priority in ascending(+) or descending(-) order.

Default: -time

Bindings allow one to perform an action when an event is triggered.

Supported options:

on-button-left=action

Performs the action when the left pointer button is pressed.

Default: invoke-default-action

on-button-middle=action

Performs the action when the middle pointer button is pressed.

Default: none

on-button-right=action

Performs the action when the right pointer button is pressed.

Default: dismiss

on-touch=action

Performs the action when tapped via a touch device.

Default: dismiss

on-notify=action

Performs the action when the notification is opened.

Default: none

Supported actions:

none

Do nothing.

dismiss [--no-history]

Dismiss the current notification. If --no-history is passed, the notification won't be added to history.

dismiss-all

Dismiss all notifications.

dismiss-group

Dismiss notifications in the current group.

invoke-action <action>

Invoke the named action on the notification.

An xdg-activation token will be sent to the client, allowing the client to request focus from the compositor. The compositor must support the xdg_activation_v1 protocol and allow the focus request for the following example to work correctly:

[app-name="some-app-id" actionable]
on-button-left=invoke-action mail-reply-sender

invoke-default-action

Invoke the default action on the notification.

exec <command>

Execute a shell command.

The command will be executed in a POSIX shell. The shell variable id will be set to the notification ID. For example, the following option will display an interactive action menu on middle click:

on-button-middle=exec makoctl menu -n "$id" dmenu -p 'Select action: '

The following option will play a sound when a new notification is opened:

on-notify=exec mpv /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/message.oga

font=font

Set font to font, as a Pango font description. For more information on Pango font descriptions, see: https://docs.gtk.org/Pango/type_func.FontDescription.from_string.html#description

Default: monospace 10

background-color=color

Set background color to color. See COLORS for more information.

Default: #285577FF

text-color=color

Set text color to color. See COLORS for more information.

Default: #FFFFFFFF

width=px

Set width of notification popups.

Default: 300

height=px

Set maximum height of notification popups. Notifications whose text takes up less space are shrunk to fit.

Default: 100

outer-margin=directional

Set outer-margin of each edge to the size specified by directional. See DIRECTIONAL VALUES for more information. This margin applies to the outside of the whole notification list.

Default: 0

margin=directional

Set margin of each edge to the size specified by directional. See DIRECTIONAL VALUES for more information. This margin applies to each individual notification. Note that it applies in addition to outer-margin, meaning first and last notifications will use the sum of both margins.

Default: 10

padding=directional

Set padding on each side to the size specified by directional. See DIRECTIONAL VALUES for more information.

Default: 5

border-size=px

Set popup border size to px pixels.

Default: 2

border-color=color

Set popup border color to color. See COLORS for more information.

Default: #4C7899FF

border-radius=px

Set popup corner radius to px pixels.

Default: 0

progress-color=[over|source] color

Set popup progress indicator color to color. See COLOR for more information. To draw the progress indicator on top of the background color, use the over attribute. To replace the background color, use the source attribute (this can be useful when the notification is semi-transparent).

Progress can be indicated in a notification by setting a hint, "value" to an integer between 0 and 100 inclusive.

Default: over #5588AAFF

icons=0|1

Show icons in notifications.

Default: 1

max-icon-size=px

Set maximum icon size to px pixels.

Default: 64

icon-path=path[:path...]

Paths to search for icons when a notification specifies a name instead of a full path. Colon-delimited. This approximates the search algorithm used by the XDG Icon Theme Specification, but does not support any of the theme metadata. Therefore, if you want to search parent themes, you'll need to add them to the path manually.

The path should be the root of the icon theme, the categories and resolutions will be searched for the most appropriate match.

/usr/share/icons/hicolor and /usr/share/pixmaps are always searched.

Default: ""

icon-location=position

Position of the icon relative to the displayed text. Valid options are left, right, top and bottom.

Default: left

markup=0|1

If 1, enable Pango markup. If 0, disable Pango markup. If enabled, Pango markup will be interpreted in your format specifier and in the body of notifications.

Default: 1

actions=0|1

Applications may request an action to be associated with activating a notification. Disabling this will cause mako to ignore these requests.

Default: 1

history=0|1

If set, mako will save notifications that have reached their timeout into the history buffer instead of immediately deleting them. max-history determines the size of the history buffer.

Default: 1

format=format

Set notification format string to format. See FORMAT SPECIFIERS for more information. To change this for grouped notifications, set it within a grouped criteria.

Default: <b>%s</b>\n%b
Default when grouped: (%g) <b>%s</b>\n%b

text-alignment=left|center|right

Set notification text alignment.

Default: left

default-timeout=timeout

Set the default timeout to timeout in milliseconds. To disable the timeout, set it to zero.

Default: 0

ignore-timeout=0|1

If set, mako will ignore the expire timeout sent by notifications and use the one provided by default-timeout instead.

Default: 0

group-by=field[,field,...]

A comma-separated list of criteria fields that will be compared to other visible notifications to determine if this one should form a group with them. All listed criteria must be exactly equal for two notifications to group.

Default: none

max-visible=n

Set maximum number of visible notifications to n. Older notifications will be hidden. If -1, all notifications are visible.

Default: 5

output=name

Show notifications on the specified output. If empty, notifications will appear on the focused output.

Requires the compositor to support the Wayland protocol xdg-output-unstable-v1 version 2.

Default: ""

layer=layer

Arrange mako at the specified layer, relative to normal windows. Supported values are background, bottom, top, and overlay. Using overlay will cause notifications to be displayed above fullscreen windows, though this may also occur at top depending on your compositor.

Default: top

anchor=position

Show notifications at the specified position on the output. Supported values are top-right, top-center, top-left, bottom-right, bottom-center, bottom-left, center-right, center-left and center.

Default: top-right

In addition to the set of options at the top of the file, the config file may contain zero or more sections, each containing any combination of the BINDING OPTIONS and STYLE OPTIONS. The sections, called criteria, are defined with an INI-like square bracket syntax. The brackets may contain any number of fields, like so:

[field=value field2=value2 ...]

When a notification is received, it will be compared to the fields defined in each criteria. If all of the fields match, the style options within will be applied to the notification. Fields not included in the criteria are not considered during the match. A notification may match any number of criteria. This matching occurs in the order the criteria are defined in the config file, meaning that if multiple criteria match a notification, the last occurrence of any given style option will "win".

The following fields are available in criteria:

  • app-name (string)
  • app-icon (string)
  • summary (string): exact match on the summary of the notification. This field conflicts with summary~.
  • summary~ (string): a POSIX extended regular expression match on the summary of the notification. This field conflicts with summary.
  • body (string): an exact match on the body of the notification. This field conflicts with body~.
  • body~ (string): a POSIX extended regular expression match on the body of the notification. This field conflicts with body.
  • urgency (one of "low", "normal", "critical")
  • category (string)
  • desktop-entry (string)
  • actionable (boolean)
  • expiring (boolean)
  • mode (string): only apply style options in this section if the provided mode is currently enabled. For more information about modes, see the MODES section.

The following fields are also available to match on a second pass based on where previous style options decided to place each notification:

  • grouped (boolean): whether the notification is grouped with any others.
  • group-index (int): the notification's index within its group, or -1 if it is not grouped.
  • hidden (boolean): special field which defines the style for the placeholder shown when the number of notifications or groups exceeds max-visible.
  • output (string): which output the notification was sorted onto. See the output style option for possible values.
  • anchor (string): which position on the output the notification was assigned to. See the anchor style option for possible values.

There are only two passes performed on each notification, so the second-pass criteria are not allowed to reposition the notification.

If a field's value contains special characters, they may be escaped with a backslash, or quoted:

[app-name="Google Chrome"]

[app-name=Google\ Chrome]

Quotes within quotes may also be escaped, and a literal backslash may be specified as \\. No spaces are allowed around the equal sign. Escaping equal signs within values is unnecessary.

Additionally, boolean values may be specified using any of true/false, 0/1, or as bare words:

[actionable=true] [actionable=1] [actionable]

[actionable=false] [actionable=0] [!actionable]

There are three criteria always present at the front of the list:

  • An empty criteria which matches all notifications and contains the defaults for all style options, overwritten with any configured in the global section.
  • [grouped], which sets the default format for grouped notifications and sets them invisible.
  • [group-index=0], which makes the first member of each group visible again.

These options can be overridden by simply defining the criteria yourself and overriding them.

There are some rules restricting what can be configured depending on what is being matched by a given criteria. Criteria matching grouped or group-index are not allowed to change the anchor, output, or group-by, as this would invalidate the grouping. Grouping is only performed once rather than recursively, to avoid the potential for infinite loops.

Some style options are not useful in the global context and therefore have no associated command-line option.

invisible=0|1

Whether this notification should be invisible even if it is above the max-visible cutoff. This is used primarily for hiding members of groups. If you want to make more than the first group member visible, turn this option off within a group-index criteria.

Default: 0

Colors can be specified as #RRGGBB or #RRGGBBAA.

Some options set values that affect all four edges of a notification. These options can be specified in several different ways, depending on how much control over each edge is desired:

  • A single value will apply to all four edges.
  • Two values will set vertical and horizontal edges separately.
  • Three will set top, horizontal, and bottom edges separately.
  • Four will set top, right, bottom, and left edges separately.

When specifying multiple values, they should be comma-separated. For example, this would set the top margin to 10, left and right to 20, and bottom to five:

margin = 10,20,5

Format specification works similarly to printf(3), but with a different set of specifiers.

%% Literal "%"

\\ Literal "\"

\n New Line

%a Application name

%s Notification summary

%b Notification body

%g Number of notifications in the current group

%i Notification id

%h Number of hidden notifications

%t Total number of notifications

mako supports applying style options conditionally via modes. A configuration section with a mode criteria will only be applied if the current mode matches. makoctl(1) can be used to change the current mode.

The initial list of modes contains a single mode called "default". This is deprecated, in a future version the initial list of modes will be empty.

For example, to hide all notifications if the mode "do-not-disturb" is enabled:

[mode=do-not-disturb]
invisible=1

makoctl mode -a do-not-disturb will hide all notifications, makoctl mode -r do-not-disturb will show them again.

Maintained by Simon Ser <contact@emersion.fr>, who is assisted by other open-source contributors. For more information about mako development, see https://github.com/emersion/mako.

mako(1) makoctl(1)

2024-05-12