In a traditional desktop environment such as Gnome or KDE, one has a Windows-style taskbar and tray, with small icons for various apps. When an app wants your attention, it generally changes its tray icon, and might highlight or flash the taskbar entry. In a pure xmonad setup, one typically has neither a taskbar nor a tray, so how do you know when someone addresses you on IRC, or sends a Pidgin message?
Xmonad offers a solution, the XMonad.Hooks.UrgencyHook module. This module offers a variety of ways for xmonad to notify you that an app is requesting your attention, and some ways for you to respond.
XMonad Setup
When an app sets the X WM_URGENT option (see below on how to configure this in some common apps), UrgencyHook will notify you. Precisely how it does so is up to you. One uncommon choice is popping up a temporary dzen2 window, which I won’t be covering here (see the XMonad.Hooks.UrgencyHook docs). By far the most common technique is highlighting the workspace in your dzen or xmobar workspace list.
To start, import XMonad.Hooks.UrgencyHook. Then your xmonad defaultConfig { ... } line changes to: xmonad $ withUrgencyHook NoUrgencyHook defaultConfig { ... }. If you run the darcs version of xmonad and use the dzen function or dzenPP for your logHook you’re all set! Both of those functions set up dzen to show urgency by highlighting the workspace with the urgent window.
If you use the xmobar or xmobarPP functions, or want custom colours for your dzen, a little more work is required. You probably have a logHook defined, and it probably uses xmobarPP or dzenPP. If not, see the documentation for XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog, that’s outside of the scope of this article.
You’ll have to add the field ppUrgent = xmobarColor "yellow" "red" . xmobarStrip to your xmobarPP for xmobar, or ppUrgent = dzenColor "yellow" "red" . dzenStrip for dzen. Of course, you can choose whatever colours you like.
N.B. The dzenStrip and xmobarStrip functions only exist in darcs. If you don’t run darcs xmonad, you can get the code from here and paste it into your xmonad.hs.
A Handy Keybinding: focusUrgent
XMonad.Hooks.UrgencyHook contains a useful keybinding function, focusUrgent, which takes no arguments and focuses the most recently urgent window.
Configuring Pidgin
The second part of setting up UrgencyHook is configuring apps to set WM_URGENT. To do this for Pidgin, you need to enable the Message Notificaton plugin (included with Pidgin), and in the plugin configuration tick the “Set window manager ‘URGENT’ hint” option.
Configuring urxvt
Another common thing to want highlighting for is when someone uses your name in IRC. To make urxvt set urgent on a bell, add the line URxvt.urgentOnBell: true to your ~/.Xdefaults.
Of course, you’ll also have to set your IRC client to trigger a bell on highlight (in irssi: /set bell_beeps ON and /set beep_msg_level MSGS NOTICES DCC DCCMSGS HILIGHT). If you run it in screen, make sure screen isn’t set to use visual bell either.
The XMonad.Hooks.UrgencyHook docs also have information on setting up these apps and others. If you use a different terminal or IRC client, Google knows how to set it up for urgency hints.
UrgencyHook in Action
Here’s a screenshot of me hard at work on xmonad, with UrgencyHook notifying me that I’ve received a Pidgin message on workspace 2: IM.
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