How can I trigger a Notification Center notification from an AppleScript or shell script?

Question

I'd love to be able to take advantage of 10.8's Notification Center features in AppleScripts and shell scripts I write.

Is there a built-in command or a third-party library I can use from either an AppleScript or shell script?

Ideally the type and icon of the notification could be controlled, but even just the ability to trigger a basic banner with a stock icon (but custom text) would be appreciated.

Answer 1

terminal-notifier

From the README:

terminal-notifier is a command-line tool to send Mac OS X User Notifications, which are available in Mac OS X 10.8.

It is currently packaged as an application bundle, because NSUserNotification does not work from a ‘Foundation tool’. radar://11956694

This tool will be used by Kicker to show the status of commands which are executed due to filesystem changes. (v3.0.0)

Download

Prebuilt binaries, which are code-signed and ready to use, are available from the downloads section.

Usage

$ ./terminal-notifier.app/Contents/MacOS/terminal-notifier group-ID sender-name message [bundle-ID]

In order to use terminal-notifier, you have to call the binary inside the app bundle.

The first argument specifies the ‘group’ a notification belongs to. For any ‘group’ only one notification will ever be shown, replacing previously posted notifications. Examples are: the sender’s process ID to scope the notifications by a unique process, or the current working directory to scope notifications by a project.

The second and third arguments describe the notification itself and are its ‘title’ and ‘message’ respectively. For example, to communicate the sender of a notification to the user, you could specify the sender’s name as the title.

The fourth and last argument is an optional one. It specifies which application should be activated when the user clicks the notification. By default this will activate Terminal.app, to launch another application instead specify the application’s bundle identifier. For example, to launch Safari.app use: com.apple.Safari.

Answer 2

You can now do this with Growl2 (available from the App Store). Install Growl and enable "OS X Notifications" (screenshot)

Additionally, you'll need to install GrowlNotify for a command-line tool to send Growl notifications. You can download this tool for free on the Download page.

You can now generate Growl notifications from the command line, which will be forwarded to the Notification Center. For example:

growlnotify -n "My App" -m "Hello world"

Note that it currently doesn't seem possible to change the application icon.

Answer 3

Since Growl is not free, and terminal-notifier is not available on pre-10.8 systems, I tend to use cocoaDialog. It is free and open source, so you can probably also distribute along with your scripts.