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Tool of the Trade for CLI Apps - `node-notifier` 📺

This is a series of libraries and utilities for building Command-line-interfaces aka CLI using Node.js and ecosystem around it. Similar utilities/helpers may be available for other languages but, these series is focused on JavaScript and its friends.

You can check all articles under CLI Build Tool tag.

node-notifier

If you are building a CLI and need to show notification to user to make your CLI more interactive and user friendly, node-notifier is the package you need. Of course, it is cross-platform and you can send notifications on native Mac, Windows and Linux.

on Mac Screenshot

on Windows Screenshot

For instance, if your CLI watches a file (like chowkidar) and takes an action (like restarting a service or rebuilding your project), you can notify using system notifications along with CLI output.

Input Example macOS Notification Center Screenshot

node-notifier has a very easy to follow, simple to use API. Here is a code example:

const notifier = require("node-notifier");
// String
notifier.notify("Message");

// Object
notifier.notify({
  title: "My notification",
  message: "Hello, there!",
});

There are a lot of conditions and scenarios for cross platform implementation of this module. You can check out official repo for all usage details.

Github Repo: node-notifier

Published Jun 30, 2019

Web/Product Engineer.