Push Notifications from the Command Line to Android

Dmitri Popov

Productivity Sauce

Dec 22, 2015 GMT
Dmitri Popov

If you want to send notifications from a Linux machine or server to your Android device, notify is just the tool for the job. It consists of two components: a simple Node.js-based command-line utility and an Android app. Assuming that Node.js is installed on your Linux machine, deploying the notify utility is a matter of running the npm install -g notify-cli command. And you can install the Android app from the Google Play Store.

Once you've done that, you need to link the app and the command-line utility. Launch the Android app and note the generated identifier string. On the Linux machine, run the notify -r IDENTIFIER command, replacing the IDENTIFIER placeholder with the actual identifier string. That's all there is to it. To see whether everything works properly, run the notify -t "Hello there!" command, and you should see the notification on your Android device. In addition to sending custom text, it's also possible to pipe command output to the notify utility as follows: command ; notify.

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