Ubuntu – Turn off “Dropbox almost full” notification

dbusdropboxnotification

Dropbox for Linux has the annoying habit to send a desktop notification every few hours telling me that my space is almost full. Is there a way (under Gnome-based Ubuntu 17.10 and newer) to filter out this message, while retaining all other notifications (both from Dropbox and other programs)?

Notifications work using Dbus, if I understand correctly, so I wonder if there is a way to 'intercept' this call to filter it out without having to patch and recompile Gnome.

Best Answer

I don't have DropBox installed, but here's how you can configure Gnome3 desktop notifications per application:

Open Settings → Notifications
Click the application you want to disable notifications from
You'll be able to turn off the application's notifications, or configure various other aspects.

On re-reading your question, I see you want to retain other DropBox notifications - so this isn't the answer you're looking for. I've asked much the same question (but phrased more generically) at Does Gnome3 have a method to filter desktop notifications?

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Filter messages to “notification area” applet

A crude generic solution:

How to disable notification from network-manager.

dbus-monitor "interface='org.freedesktop.Notifications'"                \
| grep --line-buffered  'string "NetworkManager"'                       \
| sed -u -e  's/.*/killall notify-osd/g'                                \
| bash

Replace string "NetworkManager" with the desired RE to filter out messages.

To get an idea of what RE pattern match to look for run:
dbus-monitor "interface='org.freedesktop.Notifications'"
and look at the output while the notifications are popping-up.

Caveat:
killall notify-osd is non-discriminating and completely wipes the notification stack of any pending messages irregardless of whether NM is the notifying agent.

For details see:
How can I temporarily filter-out certain notification-bubbles coming from specific sources?

cross refs.:

Ubuntu – How to prevent notifications from grabbing focus in 18.04

Sometimes a notification popup can take focus
sometimes only
This is because of the smart focus feature of the Gnome Window Manager

A workaround will be to change the smart focus default feature to strict

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-new-windows 'strict'

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Filter messages to “notification area” applet

Ubuntu – How to prevent notifications from grabbing focus in 18.04

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