notify-send-all

Uses notify-send (libnotify) to send a desktop notification to all users with a graphical session (e.g., Gnome).

notify-send is a great tool, but it only notifies the user that runs it (without some help). This script provides that help and allows scripts run as root (e.g., a cron job or systemd.timer) to send notifications to all graphical sessions.

NOTES:

1. This script is meant to run as root. Otherwise, sudo will ask for passwords for each user. Probably not something you want from a script.
2. On Debian (and probably all derivatives), you will need to install libnotify-bin.
3. This script does not send a message to root. This fixes a timeout on some distributions/desktops when attempting to send a message to root. Besides root should never be used as a user.

Usage

notify-send-all "Lifeboats!" "The ship is sinking."

Installation

Simply copy the file to /usr/local/bin (or similar).