ntfy is a super simple pub-sub notification service. It allows you to send desktop notifications via scripts.

Last update: Jan 9, 2023

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Overview

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.

Install ntfy using one of the methods described below
Then (optionally) edit /etc/ntfy/config.yml
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/v0.0.4/ntfy_0.0.4_amd64.deb
dpkg -i ntfy_0.0.4_amd64.deb

Fedora/RHEL/CentOS:

rpm -ivh https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy/releases/download/v0.0.4/ntfy_0.0.4_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/v0.0.4/ntfy_0.0.4_linux_x86_64.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/bin -zxf ntfy_0.0.4_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.

Third party libraries and resources:

github.com/urfave/cli/v2 (MIT) is used to drive the CLI
Mixkit sound (Mixkit Free License) used as notification sound
Lato Font (OFL) is used as a font in the Web UI
GoReleaser (MIT) is used to create releases

Comments

iOS app

~If you're interested in making an iOS app, I'm more than happy to help out. Unfortunately I don't have an iPhone or a Mac so it's a little tricky for me.~

~Significant work has been done here (https://github.com/Copephobia/ntfy-ios), but it's stale now, sadly.~

I have picked up the work in https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy-ios and will hopefully be able to release soon.
enhancement in-progress 🏃 ios

opened by binwiederhier 74
Auth

I would like to require authentication to pub/sub to topics at least on private servers. I think Google Identity would be a good provider here since authenticating to it is a familiar part of the types of workflows I would like to incorporate this into.
enhancement android-app in-progress 🏃 🔥 HOT unified-push

opened by dwmccheyne 52
👶 Baby break - Baby girl was born 8/30 :partying_face:

Hey folks, my daughter ~~is about to be born~~ was born 8/30/22, so I'll be taking some time off from working on ntfy. I'll likely return to working on features and bugs in a few weeks. I hope you understand.

opened by binwiederhier 40
Maximize battery life
Having something like the following would be very cool, though it might be difficult to build. Basically:

Detect that the device is on a new network (based on SSID, mobile data status, etc)

The device calls the subscribe URL (/json or /sse) with ?keepalive=test

The server sends keepalives at a known increasing interval, 30s, 35s, 40s, 45s ...

At some point (say 90 sec), the client no longer receives the keepalive on time - it detects that the connection was disrupted.

Next, it can connect to the server with ?keepalive=85 and receive keepalives every 85s.

This information can be cached per SSID/mobile data/etc for some time.

enhancement android-app
opened by karmanyaahm 22

default-user and default-password in client.yml not working

I've created a file in ~/.config/ntfy/client.yml with this content

default-host: https://push.pablo.tools
default-user: pinpox
default-password: mysupersecretspassword

But the client seems to ingnore the values:

$ ntfy pub --config ~/.config/ntfy/client.yml https://push.pablo.tools/test                                                                                                                                                         
{"code":40301,"http":403,"error":"forbidden","link":"https://ntfy.sh/docs/publish/#authentication"}

Using the NTFY_USER environment variable works, so I know the crendentials are in fact correct:

$ export NTFY_USER=pinpox:mysupersecretspassword
$ ntfy pub test test                                                                                                                                                                                                                
{"id":"ix6JqNqNDETe","time":1667306079,"event":"message","topic":"test","message":"test"}

🪲 bug server

opened by pinpox 20

Docker not starting with v1.18.1 on arm64
I am trying to run ntfy on docker on a Raspberry 4. Executing

docker run -p 127.0.0.1:4043:80 -it binwiederhier/ntfy serve

stops after a few seconds without any output, and return code 132. (same if explicitly using the arm64-tagged image)

Running on Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-1056-raspi aarch64)
🪲 bug build server
opened by iexos 19
Support for webhooks from Prometheus, GitHub, ...

It would be nice if ntfy.sh could receive the json format from alertmanager: https://www.prometheus.io/docs/alerting/latest/configuration/#webhook_config

And the Annotiation shoud be the Title, generatedURL as message and labels as Tags exclude label "priority" should be used for Priority

PS: With one request multiple messages would be created ...
enhancement integrations server

opened by genofire 19
Consider Including a Matrix Gateway endpoint as part of ntfy
Hello, this is kind of awkward to ask as the use-case is quite specific, but at the same time it should be fairly self-contained.

Rationale

The core issue is using UnifiedPush in conjunction with a Matrix Client and Server. The Matrix Client will pass a push URL to the Matrix server. However, the Matrix spec mandates some endpoints for push servers: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.2/push-gateway-api/

Basically, the spec mandates the use of the /_matrix/push/v1/notify path.

Therefore, one has to use an intermediate gateway before forwarding requests to ntfy. When users do not use their own, clients use default ones, which led to rate-limiting: #144

Benefit to users

Currently, users can host a gateway themselves through the common-proxies project, or some other rewrite proxy.

That's one more step for users, who might feel discouraged from doing so. Including that gateway would increase privacy, for users of the public ntfy instance, but even more so for users who host their own homeserver and ntfy instance, as push messages do not need to travel through third-party gateways.

Needed changes

The set of features to support is relatively simple:

Answer
GET /_matrix/push/v1/notify

With

HTTP/1.1 200 OK {"unifiedpush":{"gateway":"matrix"}}

Handle Pushes on that endpoint. From the spec:
POST /_matrix/push/v1/notify { "notification": { "content": { "body": "I'm floating in a most peculiar way.", "msgtype": "m.text" }, "counts": { "missed_calls": 1, "unread": 2 }, "devices": [ { "app_id": "org.matrix.matrixConsole.ios", "data": {}, "pushkey": "https://ntfy.sh/exampleTopicID?up=1", "pushkey_ts": 12345678, "tweaks": { "sound": "bing" } } ], "event_id": "$3957tyerfgewrf384", "prio": "high", "room_alias": "#exampleroom:matrix.org", "room_id": "!slw48wfj34rtnrf:example.com", "room_name": "Mission Control", "sender": "@exampleuser:matrix.org", "sender_display_name": "Major Tom", "type": "m.room.message" } }

That should be forwarded to the topic in json_body["notification"]["devices"][0]["pushkey"]. In this case, exampleTopicID?up=1.

Answer that push with:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK {"rejected":[]}

Technically one could reject events for some topics that have never been listened to, or were deleted from the app, but that sounds a bit alien to the way ntfy works.

That's all. This should only be necessary until the Matrix Spec Change 2970 lands to delete that requirement and allow arbitrary paths, so that's your call.

Impact assessment

One more thing to expect: on the public ntfy instance, FluffyChat's and schildichat's public gateways wouldn't be used anymore, so individual Matrix servers would be subjected to rate-limiting instead, probably Matrix.org, kde.org and mozilla.org, as they are the biggest I can think of right now.

On the other hand, it makes it easier to single out abusive Matrix homeservers without locking users out. Moreover, as more clients appear (Element will soon support UP), more gateways will appear.

It might also make it easier to rate-limit matrix separately while the MSC isn't merged.
enhancement server unified-push
opened by MayeulC 17

arm64 build randomly crashes with varying stack traces

$ qemu-aarch64 dist/ntfy_arm64_linux_arm64/ntfy
fatal error: qemu: uncaught target signal 11 (Segmentation fault) - core dumped

standard_init_linux.go:228: exec user process caused: exec format error

🪲 bug server

opened by binwiederhier 16

Opening ntfy.sh link in a browser on Android opens the app and subscribes to the topic if the app is installed
A scenario may be:

I have the ntfy.sh app installed on my Android device

A browser page or application (like Slack) has a URL to a ntfy.sh topic

If I click on the ntfy.sh link, it will attempt to open the app and subscribe to the topic, so that I can view it from there.

If I do not have the ntfy.sh link, it will display the web page for that topic.
enhancement android-app in-progress 🏃
opened by Copephobia 13

CLI on Termux (Android) fails to connect

I compiled the cli under Termux (the precompiled binaries didn't work). Compilation worked, but pub/sub doesn't work.

Here's compilation output:

$ make cli-client
mkdir -p server/docs server/site
touch server/docs/index.html server/site/app.html
# This is a target to build the CLI (excluding the server) manually. This should work on Linux/macOS/Windows.
# Use this for development, if you really don't want to install GoReleaser ...
mkdir -p dist/ntfy_client server/docs
CGO_ENABLED=0 go build \
        -o dist/ntfy_client/ntfy \
        -tags noserver \
        -ldflags \
        "-X main.version=v1.27.2 -X main.commit=69d6cdd -X main.date=1656031518"
go: downloading github.com/urfave/cli/v2 v2.10.2
go: downloading gopkg.in/yaml.v2 v2.4.0
go: downloading github.com/gabriel-vasile/mimetype v1.4.0
go: downloading github.com/olebedev/when v0.0.0-20211212231525-59bd4edcf9d6
go: downloading golang.org/x/term v0.0.0-20220526004731-065cf7ba2467
go: downloading golang.org/x/time v0.0.0-20220609170525-579cf78fd858
go: downloading golang.org/x/sys v0.0.0-20220622161953-175b2fd9d664
go: downloading github.com/AlekSi/pointer v1.2.0
go: downloading github.com/pkg/errors v0.9.1
go: downloading gopkg.in/yaml.v3 v3.0.1
go: downloading github.com/BurntSushi/toml v1.1.0
go: downloading github.com/cpuguy83/go-md2man/v2 v2.0.2
go: downloading github.com/russross/blackfriday/v2 v2.1.0
go: downloading golang.org/x/net v0.0.0-20220622184535-263ec571b305

Here's output of a pub command:

$ ./dist/ntfy_client/ntfy pub dan000-tests
Post "https://ntfy.sh/dan000-tests": dial tcp: lookup ntfy.sh on [::1]:53: read udp [::1]:59557->[::1]:53: read: connection refused

Similar output for sub command. Adding -d and --trace didn't add any extra output.

curl works fine, however.

android-app question

opened by goodevilgenius 12

The nginx configuration(and the one used by ntfy.sh) leaks topic name/auth query in logs

In https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy-ansible/blob/eaa9b7c7ee96adc106317ddfaf07dc28e7d6bde1/roles/nginx/files/nginx.conf#L48 log_format includes $request which contains the request path, which in turn leaks topic names. This is mitigated with the use of http basic auth, but in the case of authentication via a query parameter the credentials are also logged.

It's is not a huge issue, but potentially could end up quite bad if someone is able to see the log(via LFI? An admin accidentally forgetting they were screensharing? Idk), so maybe it's worth fixing?

The docs for setting up a reverse proxy in front of ntfy(https://docs.ntfy.sh/config/?h=nginx#nginxapache2caddy) don't explicitly set the log format themselves, but the default configuration used by most linux distributions will include the $request param

opened by MaeIsBad 0

ClamAV detected Coinminer in docker image

Was scanning the other day and got the warning on my containerd folder. Sure enough I can reproduce it by saving the docker image.

shawn@SHAWN-DESKTOP:~$ docker pull docker.io/binwiederhier/ntfy
Using default tag: latest
latest: Pulling from binwiederhier/ntfy
Digest: sha256:d13fda9b2741de857c3c9be2f89b24c514922da7aa3da060580640865beffdc1
Status: Image is up to date for binwiederhier/ntfy:latest
docker.io/binwiederhier/ntfy:latest
shawn@SHAWN-DESKTOP:~$ docker save -o ntfy.tar docker.io/binwiederhier/ntfy@sha256:d13fda9b2741de857c3c9be2f89b24c514922da7aa3da060580640865beffdc1
shawn@SHAWN-DESKTOP:~$ mkdir ntfy
shawn@SHAWN-DESKTOP:~$ tar -xf ntfy.tar -C ntfy
shawn@SHAWN-DESKTOP:~$ clamscan -r -i ntfy
/home/shawn/ntfy/785c9d282366f58ab6d7a65b79e22192780e823a0455bddbbf84facdc4732370/layer.tar: Unix.Packed.Coinminer-6856324-0 FOUND

----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------
Known viruses: 8647316
Engine version: 0.103.6
Scanned directories: 3
Scanned files: 8
Infected files: 1
Data scanned: 34.96 MB
Data read: 26.05 MB (ratio 1.34:1)
Time: 16.469 sec (0 m 16 s)
Start Date: 2023:01:09 03:50:34
End Date:   2023:01:09 03:50:50

question

opened by shawnhwei 4

Paste images from clipboard

Currently NTFY supports attaching a file from a local source or via an external URL. It would be cool if one could paste from clipboard and the file uploading just worked. An use case I can think of is quickly sharing an image from one computer to another.

opened by rounakdatta 3
Modularize init and install scripts and remove hard requirement on systemd

Currently init and install scripts makes the assumption you are installing ntfy on a distro with systemd present.

As the unix-like world isn't just about systemd, and it is often the case systemd is prohibited, the scripts used needs to facilitate and support the most commonly used non-systemd init systems like SysV, OpenRC, s6, runit and so on, for users who runs Alpine Linux, Devuan Linux or any other non-systemd distro as their server base. There are several ways this could be solved, but the most straight forward way, I would suggest to have have an init script generator which can be invoked in the postinst step and output an init script based on the target system.

opened by code-kungfu 0
emersion/go-smtp upgrade to v0.16.0 introduced breaking changes

See https://github.com/emersion/go-smtp/issues/208

v0.16.0 changes the API of the library (see https://github.com/emersion/go-smtp/compare/v0.15.0...v0.16.0). I have downgraded to 0.15.0 for now. I may either fork the library, or do some upgrade work. Upgrading to the new API was quite easy, but the tests have to be re-written. See https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy/pull/568 for a WIP
🪲 bug server

opened by binwiederhier 0