Make Firefox Use Ubuntu’s Notifications

When a download completes in Firefox, you get a little popup that looks something like this:

 

 

 

 

That’s all well and good, but completely unnecessary considering Ubuntu’s had it’s own notification since Jaunty, which might I add is a lot nicer and is obviously consistent across the system.

OK, so how do you get Firefox to use these notifications? Well, the answer is a simple extension, FirefoxNotify (and some dependencies of course, it being Linux and all).

Before you install the extension, you will need the following:

Python

DBus

Galago compliant notification daemon (libnotify)

python-notify

xdg-utils (for opening files from the notification)

python-dbus

Now you will be presented with this when a download is done:

 

 

 

 

Cool, but there is still one problem: although Firefox will show the notification above, it will also still show it’s own popup like before, but never fear, a fix is here!

• Type about:config into the address bar and dismiss any messages.
• Search for the string: browser.download.manager.showAlertOnComplete
• Set the value to false.

Restart Firefox and you’ll be loving them notifications!

Please note that there is a bug: multiple notifications are displayed if there are multiple windows open. (Not a deal breaker though )

Please report anything else you find to http://github.com/linkinpark342/firefoxnotify/issues