Notification

The Notification interface of the Notifications API is used to configure and display desktop notifications to the user. These notifications' appearance and specific functionality vary across platforms but generally they provide a way to asynchronously provide information to the user.

Notification() (en-US)

Creates a new instance of the Notification object.

These properties are available only on the Notification object itself.

Notification.permission (en-US) Read only

A string representing the current permission to display notifications. Possible values are:

• denied — The user refuses to have notifications displayed.
• granted — The user accepts having notifications displayed.
• default — The user choice is unknown and therefore the browser will act as if the value were denied.

These properties are available only on instances of the Notification object.

Notification.actions (en-US) Read only

The actions array of the notification as specified in the constructor's options parameter.

Notification.badge (en-US) Read only

The URL of the image used to represent the notification when there is not enough space to display the notification itself.

Notification.body (en-US) Read only

The body string of the notification as specified in the constructor's options parameter.

Notification.data (en-US) Read only

Returns a structured clone of the notification’s data.

Notification.dir (en-US) Read only

The text direction of the notification as specified in the constructor's options parameter.

Notification.lang (en-US) Read only

The language code of the notification as specified in the constructor's options parameter.

Notification.tag (en-US) Read only

The ID of the notification (if any) as specified in the constructor's options parameter.

Notification.icon (en-US) Read only

The URL of the image used as an icon of the notification as specified in the constructor's options parameter.

Notification.image (en-US) Read only

The URL of an image to be displayed as part of the notification, as specified in the constructor's options parameter.

Notification.renotify (en-US) Read only

Specifies whether the user should be notified after a new notification replaces an old one.

Notification.requireInteraction (en-US) Read only

A Boolean indicating that a notification should remain active until the user clicks or dismisses it, rather than closing automatically.

Notification.silent (en-US) Read only

Specifies whether the notification should be silent — i.e., no sounds or vibrations should be issued, regardless of the device settings.

Notification.timestamp (en-US) Read only

Specifies the time at which a notification is created or applicable (past, present, or future).

Notification.title (en-US) Read only

The title of the notification as specified in the first parameter of the constructor.

Notification.vibrate (en-US) Read only

Specifies a vibration pattern for devices with vibration hardware to emit.

Event handlers

Notification.onclick (en-US)

A handler for the click (en-US) event. It is triggered each time the user clicks on the notification.

Notification.onclose (en-US)

A handler for the close event. It is triggered when the user closes the notification.

Notification.onerror (en-US)

A handler for the error (en-US) event. It is triggered each time the notification encounters an error.

Notification.onshow (en-US)

A handler for the show (en-US) event. It is triggered when the notification is displayed.

These methods are available only on the Notification object itself.

Notification.requestPermission()

Requests permission from the user to display notifications.

These properties are available only on an instance of the Notification object or through its prototype. The Notification object also inherits from the EventTarget (en-US) interface.

Notification.close() (en-US)

Programmatically closes a notification.

Assume this basic HTML:

<button onclick="notifyMe()">Notify me!</button>

It's possible to send a notification as follows — here we present a fairly verbose and complete set of code you could use if you wanted to first check whether notifications are supported, then check if permission has been granted for the current origin to send notifications, then request permission if required, before then sending a notification.

function notifyMe() {
  // Let's check if the browser supports notifications
  if (!("Notification" in window)) {
    alert("This browser does not support desktop notification");
  }

  // Let's check whether notification permissions have already been granted
  else if (Notification.permission === "granted") {
    // If it's okay let's create a notification
    var notification = new Notification("Hi there!");
  }

  // Otherwise, we need to ask the user for permission
  else if (Notification.permission !== "denied") {
    Notification.requestPermission().then(function (permission) {
      // If the user accepts, let's create a notification
      if (permission === "granted") {
        var notification = new Notification("Hi there!");
      }
    });
  }

  // At last, if the user has denied notifications, and you
  // want to be respectful there is no need to bother them any more.
}

In many cases, you don't need to be this verbose. For example, in our Emogotchi demo (see source code), we simply run Notification.requestPermission regardless to make sure we can get permission to send notifications (this uses the newer promise-based method syntax):

Notification.requestPermission().then(function(result) {
  console.log(result);
});

Then we run a simple spawnNotification() function when we want to fire a notification — this is passed arguments to specify the body, icon, and title we want. Then it creates the necessary options object and fires the notification using the Notification() (en-US) constructor.

function spawnNotification(body, icon, title) {
  var options = {
      body: body,
      icon: icon
  };
  var n = new Notification(title, options);
}

• Using the Notifications API