• Registered: 2010-12-30
  • Posts: 927

Topic: [How-to]Get Facebook notifications on your desktop

I figured this out a while ago and thought I'd share how to get Facebook notifications to appear e.g. in Conky (the way I use this script)

The first step is to figure out what the url for your Notification RSS feed is.  To do this, click on the Notifications icon and click "See all notifications".  There, at the top, you'll see a link titled RSS.  Copy that link.

The second step is to save this script:

#!/bin/bash
numberoflines=5
address="$URL"
wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.55 Safari/533.4" -q $address -O - | grep title | sed 's/<title>//g' | sed 's/<\/title>//g' | sed "s/\&apos\;/'/g" | sed 's/\&quot\;/"/g' | tail -n +2 | head -n $numberoflines

where $URL is the url you copied in the first step.

That's it!  Just run that script periodically to see your facebook notifications!

- Chaanakya

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chaanakya's Website

  • From: Chattanooga TN
  • Registered: 2009-09-13
  • Posts: 484

Re: [How-to]Get Facebook notifications on your desktop

It works great thanks! I'm just curious though - is there anyway where it only shows new notifications, like the ones that light up on the webpage?

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
  • Registered: 2011-03-09
  • Posts: 3,224

Re: [How-to]Get Facebook notifications on your desktop

^ all you're doing here is reading an RSS-feed from Facebook with all your Notifications. so to only have 'new' notifications shown, you'd have to use some sort of system for 'marking things read'... not sure how to accomplish something like that. maybe someone else has great ideas?

bash :: @script :: system :: fclean
  • Registered: 2012-01-25
  • Posts: 34

Re: [How-to]Get Facebook notifications on your desktop

They have a pubdate attached 

 <pubDate>Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:29:26 +0000</pubDate>

You could add a button to the conky that writes out the time to a log file when it's clicked and only show notifications after that point, like a clear all button.

I'll give it a go when I finish work but I wouldn't expect too much from me lol my bash foo isn't up to much

  • From: Chattanooga TN
  • Registered: 2009-09-13
  • Posts: 484

Re: [How-to]Get Facebook notifications on your desktop

hm that's a pretty good idea! i'll see if i can get around to something like that as well smile

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
  • Registered: 2010-12-30
  • Posts: 927

Re: [How-to]Get Facebook notifications on your desktop

I'm not sure if Conky is clickable, but the general idea sounds great!  I'll see if I can get around to it sometime, although college is quite challenging tongue

Check out Musik - an easy-to-use text-to-music converter!
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chaanakya's Website

  • From: 36.0718,-119.03519
  • Registered: 2011-06-19
  • Posts: 350

Re: [How-to]Get Facebook notifications on your desktop

Link to The Monster Conky Support Thread

Congratulations, you've figured out the sound of one hand clapping...