dunstctl(1)

📦
version 1.13.2 · 11 versions
, in fedora 43, fedora 44

💖 dunstctl — bestie's remote control for dunst 💖

okay so. hi. you're looking at dunstctl, the command line control utility for dunst, and honestly? it's giving backstage pass to your notification daemon. ✨ This is dunstctl(1) and I'm about to make it make sense. 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dunstctl COMMAND [PARAMETER]

that's it. that's the whole shape of it. a command, maybe a parameter, and you're off. 💅

🎀 COMMANDS 🎀

  • action notification_position — runs the default action for the notification sitting at the position you give it. if there's no default action available, it opens that notification's context menu instead. counting starts at the top, and the first notification up there is 0. 🔢
  • close [ID] — closes the topmost notification that's currently on screen. you can pass an ID if you want, and then it closes the matching notification instead (assuming it's actually present, bestie — no promises if it isn't). 👋
  • close-all — nukes every notification currently being displayed. all of them. clean slate, main character energy. 💀✨
  • context — opens the context menu for the notifications that are currently open, showing you all the available actions and urls. like a little dropdown of possibilities. 🌈
  • count [displayed/history/waiting] — hands back how many notifications are displayed, shown, and waiting. pass no argument at all and it just prints everything. 🧮
  • history — exports the history as JSON. for when you want receipts. 📜
  • history-clear — deletes every notification from the history. bye bye, no trace. 🧹
  • history-pop [ID] — brings back the notification you closed most recently. call it again and again to keep walking back through older notifications, up to the history limit you configured in dunst. you can optionally hand history-pop an ID too, and then the notification with that exact ID gets shown. 🦋
  • history-rm ID — removes the notification with the given ID from the history. gone, specifically. 🗑️
  • is-paused — checks whether dunst is currently running or paused. and if dunst is paused? notifications still get kept, they just don't get shown until you unpause. lowkey a little suspenseful of it. 😭
  • set-paused true/false/toggle — sets the paused status of dunst. false means dunst is running normally, true means dunst is paused (and the maximum pause level is 100). go read the is-paused command and the dunst man page for more, iykyk. ⏸️
  • get-pause-level — gets dunst's current pause level, where 0 is not paused and 100 is maximally paused. 🎚️

this can be combined with a notification's override_pause_level to selectively display specific notifications while paused. yes, selectively. iconic behaviour.

  • set-pause-level [level] — sets the pause level, where 0 is not paused and 100 is maximally paused. 🎛️

this can be combined with a notification's override_pause_level to selectively display specific notifications while paused. same deal as above, fr fr.

  • rule rule_name enable/disable/toggle — enables, disables or toggles the rule identified by its name. perfect for temporarily switching specific rules on or off without committing to anything. 💅
  • rules [--json] — exports all the rules you currently have configured (and yeah, --json gets you the JSON-formatted version). 👑
  • reload [dunstrc ...] — reloads the settings of the running dunst instance. you can optionally specify which configuration files to use — otherwise it reloads the config specified by the first invocation of dunst. heads up though: when dunst is reloaded, all the rules get reapplied to the original notification, so modifications made by previous rules are not taken into account. 🔁
  • debug — tries to contact dunst and checks for common faults between dunstctl and dunst. genuinely useful when something isn't working, bestie. 🔍
  • help — shows you all available commands with a brief description. the classic. 🫶

Copyright 2011-2014 Sascha Kruse

Copyright 2014-2026 Dunst contributors

Dunst is released under the BSD 3-Clause License, see LICENSE for more information.

If you feel that copyrights are violated, please send an email to the maintainers. 🙏

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

dunst(5), dmenu(1), notify-send(1), dunstify(1)

that's the whole page, no cap. every flag, every argument, every default, all of it. 💖

okay bye bestie, go control your notifications like the icon you are 👑✨ — this was dunstctl(1) from version 1.13.2, dated 2026-03-19. 🎀🦋💜

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