Infatoshi
Featured
netherite
A from-scratch C/CUDA reimplementation of Minecraft 1.11.2 that is bit-verified against the original Java game and includes batched CUDA reinforcement learning support.
AI repository intelligence
FR-AI / ANALYSISWhy it is worth attention
It provides a lightweight, minimal-dependency solution for selectively logging desktop notifications with automatic restart and persistence across logouts and reboots.
Who it is for
- Linux users who want to log specific app notifications
- System administrators monitoring notification activity
- Privacy-conscious users auditing notification senders
- Developers needing a simple notification logging tool
Use cases
- Logging messages from a specific messaging app (e.g., WhatsApp) to a file
- Auditing notification senders and timestamps for personal tracking
- Persistent notification monitoring across reboots without manual intervention
- Testing and debugging notification behavior of desktop applications
Strengths
- Simple build with only libdbus-1 dependency and a single C source file
- Persistent via systemd user service with automatic restart on failure
- Human-readable log output with timestamp, sender, and body
- Supports optional lingering to run even before user login
Considerations
- Relies on D-Bus eavesdrop policy which may be blocked by restrictive session bus configurations
- Only matches notifications by app name and summary field; does not parse the hints dict for more reliable sender identification
- Currently hardcoded to filter by a single app and sender; modifying requires editing the systemd unit file
README quick start
Build & Install
A small D-Bus listener that watches for org.freedesktop.Notifications.Notify
calls, filters by app name + sender, and appends matches to a plain-text log
file in a human-readable [timestamp] Sender: body format. Runs as a
persistent systemd user service so it survives logouts/reboots.
1. Dependencies
Debian/Ubuntu:
sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libdbus-1-dev
Fedora:
sudo dnf install gcc pkgconf-pkg-config dbus-devel
Arch:
sudo pacman -S base-devel dbus
2. Build
make
Or manually:
gcc -O2 -Wall -Wextra -o build/notify_logger logger.c $(pkg-config --cflags --libs dbus-1)
Test it manually first (Ctrl+C to stop):
./notify_logger --app whatsapp-linux-app --sender Name --out ./matches.log
Send yourself a test notification, or wait for a real one, and confirm a line
appears in matches.log and on stdout, e.g.:
[2026-07-08 14:32:10] Name : hey, are you around?
If nothing shows up, see Troubleshooting below (eavesdrop policy).
3. Install as a persistent user service (systemd)
make install
mkdir -p ~/notify_logger ~/.config/systemd/user
cp logger.service ~/.config/systemd/user/notify-logger.service
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now notify-logger.service
This makes it:
- Start automatically on login (
WantedBy=default.target) - Restart automatically if it crashes (
Restart=on-failure) - Log matches to
~/notify_logger/matches.log
Check status / logs:
systemctl --user status notify-logger.service
journalctl --user -u notify-logger.service -f
To change the target app/sender/output path, edit the ExecStart= line in
~/.config/systemd/user/notify-logger.service, then:
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user restart notify-logger.service
Optional: survive reboot even when not logged in
By default, user systemd units only run once you're logged in (or after a
graphical session starts, per After=graphical-session.target in the unit).
If you want it running even before login (e.g. on headless boot), enable
lingering:
loginctl enable-linger $USER
4. Uninstall
systemctl --user disable --now notify-logger.service
rm ~/.config/systemd/user/notify-logger.service
rm ~/.local/bin/notify_logger
systemctl --user daemon-re
Description
A small D-Bus listener that watches for notify calls, filters by app name + sender, and appends matches to a plain-text log file in a human-readable format.
Related repositories
Similar projects matched by category, topics, and programming language.
nsdkinx
Featured
twell
Twell is a tiny, embeddable, zero-allocation physics engine for interruptible, Apple-style UI animations, available as a single-header C library with Python bindings.
sqliteai
Featured
waste
WASTE is a C-based inference engine that streams MoE experts from disk to run a 2.78 trillion-parameter model on a consumer laptop with 64 GB RAM.