ntfy

ntfy (pronounce: notify) is a super simple pub-sub notification service. It allows you to send desktop and (soon) phone notifications via scripts. I run a free version of it on ntfy.sh. No signups or cost.

Usage

Subscribe to a topic

Topics are created on the fly by subscribing to them. You can create and subscribe to a topic either in a web UI, or in your own app by subscribing to an SSE/EventSource, or a JSON or raw feed.

Because there is no sign-up, the topic is essentially a password, so pick something that's not easily guessable.

Here's how you can create a topic mytopic, subscribe to it topic and wait for events. This is using curl, but you can use any library that can do HTTP GETs:

# Subscribe to "mytopic" and output one message per line (\n are replaced with a space)
curl -s ntfy.sh/mytopic/raw

# Subscribe to "mytopic" and output one JSON message per line
curl -s ntfy.sh/mytopic/json

# Subscribe to "mytopic" and output an SSE stream (supported via JS/EventSource)
curl -s ntfy.sh/mytopic/sse

You can easily script it to execute any command when a message arrives. This sends desktop notifications (just like the web UI, but without it):

while read msg; do 
  notify-send "$msg"
done < <(stdbuf -i0 -o0 curl -s ntfy.sh/mytopic/raw)

Publish messages

Publishing messages can be done via PUT or POST using. Here's an example using curl:

curl -d "long process is done" ntfy.sh/mytopic

Messages published to a non-existing topic or a topic without subscribers will not be delivered later. There is (currently) no buffering of any kind. If you're not listening, the message won't be delivered.

Installation

Please check out the releases page for binaries and deb/rpm packages.

1. Install ntfy using one of the methods described below
2. Then (optionally) edit /etc/ntfy/config.yml
3. Then just run it with ntfy (or systemctl start ntfy when using the deb/rpm).

Binaries and packages

Debian/Ubuntu (from a repository):

curl -sSL https://archive.heckel.io/apt/pubkey.txt | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt install apt-transport-https
sudo sh -c "echo 'deb [arch=amd64] https://archive.heckel.io/apt debian main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/archive.heckel.io.list"  
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ntfy

Debian/Ubuntu (manual install):

sudo apt install tmux
wget https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy/releases/download/v0.0.2/ntfy_0.0.2_amd64.deb
dpkg -i ntfy_0.0.2_amd64.deb

Fedora/RHEL/CentOS:

rpm -ivh https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy/releases/download/v0.0.2/ntfy_0.0.2_amd64.rpm

Docker:

docker run --rm -it binwiederhier/ntfy

Go:

go get -u heckel.io/ntfy

Manual install (any x86_64-based Linux):

wget https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy/releases/download/v0.0.2/ntfy_0.0.2_linux_x86_64.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/bin -zxf ntfy_0.0.2_linux_x86_64.tar.gz ntfy
./ntfy

Building

Building ntfy is simple. Here's how you do it:

make build-simple
# Builds to dist/ntfy_linux_amd64/ntfy

To build releases, I use GoReleaser. If you have that installed, you can run make build or make build-snapshot.

FAQ

Isn't this like ...?

Probably. I didn't do a whole lot of research before making this.

Can I use this in my app?

Yes. As long as you don't abuse it, it'll be available and free of charge.

What are the uptime guarantees?

Best effort.

Why is the web UI so ugly?

I don't particularly like JS or dealing with CSS. I'll make it pretty after it's functional.

Will you know what topics exist, can you spy on me?

If you don't trust me or your messages are sensitive, run your ntfy on your own server. That said, the logs do not contain any topic names or other details about you.

TODO

• add HTTPS

Contributing

I welcome any and all contributions. Just create a PR or an issue.

License

Made with ❤️ by Philipp C. Heckel, distributed under the Apache License 2.0.