DEV Community

Cover image for DIY Desktop Notifications with Python
Techelopment
Techelopment

Posted on • Edited on

2

DIY Desktop Notifications with Python

Creating a python script for a “do it yourself” reminder is very easy! The player library is all we need 🙂

First let's install the library:



pip install plyer


Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Before moving on to our reminder script, let's take a look at the notification module that will allow us to generate a notification.

The import of the notification module is done like this:



from plyer import notification


Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The function to use will be notification.notify, its main parameters are (full docs here):



title (str) - Title of the notification 
message (str) - Message contained within the notification 
app_name (str) - Name of the application 
app_icon (str) - Icon to display next to the notification message 
timeout (int) - Time to display the notification in seconds (default 10) 
ticker (str) - Text to display in the notification bar


Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

We are ready

Now that everything is configured and described, we are ready for our script.

The script below will display a notification with the title
“⏰ REMINDER” and the message “Have a break 🙂”.

The notification will appear for 5 seconds ( timeout=5 ) every 15 seconds ( time.sleep(15) ).

The notification will have as its icon the file “icon.ico” contained within the folder where we decide to save our script.

Please note: the “app_icon” parameter only accepts .ico type files



import time 
import pathlib 
from plyer import notification 

curr_path = pathlib.Path(__file__).resolve().parent 

notification_message= ''' 
Have a break 🙂 
''' 

if __name__ == "__main__" : 
    while ( True ): 

        notification.notify( 
            title= "⏰ REMINDER" , 
            message=notification_message, 
            timeout= 5 , 
            app_name= "My Notification" , 
            app_icon= str (curr_path)+ "\\icon.ico" , 
        ) 

        time.sleep( 15 )


Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Here is the final result:

Desktop reminder


Follow me #techelopment

Medium: @techelopment
Dev.to: Techelopment
facebook: Techelopment
instagram: @techelopment
X: techelopment
telegram: @techelopment_channel
youtube: @techelopment
whatsapp: Techelopment

Image of Timescale

🚀 pgai Vectorizer: SQLAlchemy and LiteLLM Make Vector Search Simple

We built pgai Vectorizer to simplify embedding management for AI applications—without needing a separate database or complex infrastructure. Since launch, developers have created over 3,000 vectorizers on Timescale Cloud, with many more self-hosted.

Read more →

Top comments (0)

A Workflow Copilot. Tailored to You.

Pieces.app image

Our desktop app, with its intelligent copilot, streamlines coding by generating snippets, extracting code from screenshots, and accelerating problem-solving.

Read the docs

👋 Kindness is contagious

Please leave a ❤️ or a friendly comment on this post if you found it helpful!

Okay