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NCutil

Notification Center command line utility - Add and remove apps, set alert styles. OS Mavericks and Yosemite. View changes via the GUI in real-time.

Short Demo Video

Modify Notification Center from the command line in OS X

Add and remove apps from Notification Center

Adding and removing apps is perfect for deploying software silently or having it pre-configured so the user doesn't have to do anything.

Add apps

  • NCutil.py -i com.noodlesoft.HazelHelper
  • NCutil.py --insert com.noodlesoft.HazelHelper

Remove apps

  • NCutil.py -r com.barebones.textwrangler
  • NCutil.py --remove com.barebones.textwrangler

Get Current Settings

Running a command like this:

  • NCutil.py --get-info com.apple.reminders

will return something like this:

Notification Center settings for Reminders.app:
    Reminders.app alert style:         Alerts
    Show notifications on lock screen: Yes
    Show message preview:              Always
    Show in Notification Center:       5 Recent Items
    Badge app icon:                    Yes
    Play sound for notifications:      Yes

Get Individual Settings

Get The Current Alert Settings

You can find out what the app's current alert setting is with the -g flag or --get-alert-style.

  • NCutil.py -g com.teamviewer.TeamViewer
  • NCutil.py --get-alert-style com.teamviewer.TeamViewer

which will return a one line response: none, banners, or alerts

Get Other Settings

You can check if individual settings are on or off using some of the examples shown below, which will return a one line response.

NCutil.py --get-show-on-lock-screen com.apple.iCal

returns true or false

NCutil.py --get-badge-app-icon com.apple.iCal

returns true or false

NCutil.py --get-sound com.apple.iCal

returns true or false

NCutil.py --get-show-in-notification-center com.apple.iCal

returns a number: 0, 5, 10, or 20

Change Settings

Adjust Alert Duration (Alerts, Banners, or None)

  • NCutil.py -a alerts com.apple.Safari
  • NCutil.py -a banners com.apple.reminders
  • NCutil.py --alert-style none com.apple.appstore

Adjust Other Checkbox Settings

You can adjust any of the checkboxes in the GUI such as the badge icon, number of recent items, whether or not to show it on the lock screen, etc. Notifications that can be adjusted with NCutil.py

Don't show iCal Notifications on the lock screen

  • NCutil.py --show-on-lock-screen true com.apple.iCal

Disable the badge app icon for Message

  • NCutil.py --badge-app-icon false com.apple.iChat

Disable the sound for TextWrangler

  • NCutil.py --sound false com.barebones.textwrangler

Set the amount of recent Notifications to show to 20 for Dropbox

  • NCutil.py --show-in-notification-center 20 com.getdropbox.dropbox

Multiple Bundle IDs

Most of the options like --insert, --remove, or --alert-style, allow you to add multiple bundle IDs to modify the same setting for multiple apps.

  • NCutil.py --remove com.noodlesoft.HazelHelper com.apple.Safari com.apple.reminders

_SYSTEM_CENTER_ Notifications

Apple has a lot of different apps that show notifications, which do not show up in the GUI. You can remove all of these hidden Notification sources by using the -remove-system-center option but is not fully-supported as we don't know what they all do. If you decide to try it, this is the equivalent to setting each one individually to an alert style of none.

  • NCutil.py --remove-system-center

Remove _SYSTEM_CENTER_ At Your Own Risk

To add a little more detail to the command above, the _SYSTEM_CENTER_ entries are hidden from the GUI. Apple is obviously not expecting users to change any of those preferences (since there is no UI to do so) and so it would be prudent to not modify those. However, this utility lets you do that. You can do so at your own risk. Personally, I have had them turned off for a few weeks now without issue, but that doesn't mean it won't break later.

Additionally, if there were some sources you still wanted to have notification for, you can simply re-enable them on an individual basis.

  • NCutil.py -a banners _SYSTEM_CENTER_:com.apple.storeagent
  • NCutil.py -a banners _SYSTEM_CENTER_:com.apple.battery-monitor

Suppress Apple Update Notifications Like The "Free Yosemite Upgrade"

From what I can tell, these are the items you need to disable to stop the Yosemite upgrade Notification.

Hide the Free Yosemite Upgrade notification

  • NCutil.py -a none _SYSTEM_CENTER_:com.apple.storeagent
  • NCutil.py -a none _SYSTEM_CENTER_:com.apple.noticeboard

Disabling the App Store Notifications may also help:

  • NCutil.py --alerts none com.apple.maspushagent

Known Issues

If Do Not Disturb is on and you run a command that modifies a setting, Do Not Disturb will be turned off unintentionally. This seems to only happen in Mavericks and is likely caused by the killall NotificiationCenter, which is what allows the commands to show up in real time.

Do Not Disturb bug

Changelog

2.4

  • added support for OS X (10.11) El Capitan

2.3

  • added --get-show-on-lock-screen
  • added --get-badge-app-icon
  • added --get-sound
  • added --get-show-in-notification-center
  • reformatted help menu into groups of similar settings

2.2

  • --get-info allows you to see what all the current settings are
  • --show-on-lock-screen can now be set to true or false
  • --badge-app-icon can now be set to true or false
  • --sound can now be set to true or false
  • --show-in-notification-center can now be set to 0, 5, 10 or 20
  • improved help menu
  • reduced verbosity of --get-alert-style since more information can be found with --get-info

2.1

  • --get-alert-style allows you to see what alert style the app currently is set to
  • --remove-system-center removes all hidden notification, but do so at your own risk
  • allow multiple arguments for --insert, --remove, and --alert-style
  • syntax changed to --alert-style from --alertstyle for easier readability
  • find the most recently used .db if multiple ones exist

2.0

  • Yosemite Support

1.0

  • Initial release. Mavericks support.