How to Change the Location of Notifications on Cinnamon (Linux Mint)

To make notifications appear on the bottom-right on Linux Mint, follow the following steps:

1: open the start menu in Cinnamon and type "Notifications." Click on the result that is called "Notifications" exactly. This is the notification settings in Cinnamon.

2: toggle the switch labelled "Show notifications on the bottom of the screen." You can also change which monitor the notifications appear by changing the "Monitor to use for displaying notifications." Notably, there is an option for displaying notifications in the "Primary monitor"" as well." instead of in an specific monitor.

Optional: click the button Display a test notification to test your new settings.

Disabling Notifications

It's possible to disable notifications on Linux Mint via this settings dialog. Just switch off "Enable notifications."

Observations

Who thought making these notifications on the top-right by default was a good idea? I don't want to have to think about whether clicking on something that suddenly appears on the screen will trigger some action or not. Honestly, I think it should just slowly slide from the side to avoid this problem altogether instead of quickly fading in!

Quotes

Everything works perfectly, but the only thing I want to change is the notification popup position. The notifications appear on top right corner of the screen, I prefer them on bottom right. Is it possible?

[...13 days later...]

No way to change it?

Notification position [https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=98648] "Apr 02, 2012" (accessed 2024-10-26)

Support for this feature seems to have been added in 2018.

Notifications: Add support for a bottom position option #7111

[...]

@clefebvre clefebvre merged commit bb0afc2 into linuxmint:master on Feb 18, 2018

https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pull/7111 (accessed 2024-10-26)

Glancing at the source code committed, it does include switch = GSettingsSwitch(_("Show notifications on the bottom side of the screen"), "org.cinnamon.desktop.notifications", "bottom-notifications"), so that's probably it.

However, Linux Mint users have struggled to find the feature even after it was added. This is due to the lack of documentation for end users available via search engines. Some users referred to older tutorials, where the only possibility for customization was editing the theme's CSS file, which meant knowing how to write CSS code. In some cases, the files referred were owned by root, which means to edit them required either learning a terminal-based text editor like nano or running a graphical application like gedit as superuser (a practice that isn't recommended because it can cause problems that new Linux users will have trouble fixing later).

[Forum member "paxolin", thread published in "02-01-2021"]

Is it possible to move the "notification panel" [...]

Can I move it permanently vertically downwards by 150 or 200 pixels, so it's away from the browser tabs?

[There was a screenshot showing the notifications over the browser tabs.]

[...] Initially I only searched the Mint forum on Linuxquestions, I didn't search the net.

It took me a long time to work it all out. I followed [tutorial from 2012 that tells you to edit root-owned Cinnamon theme files using gksu gedit [http://www.webupd8.org/2012/06/how-to-change-notifications-position-in.html]].

[...] When I looked at the css file, mine (no red box around it) doesn't have the line "margin-from-top-edge-of-screen"

So now I'm confused, as I struggled to get this far.

[Forum member "shruggy"] Just add that missing line.

["paxolin"]

[...] I had no idea I could just do that.

[...] I saw in the online example it used 'gedit', so I clicked open, then 'open with other' and gedit came up, so I tried that, but it's still 'read only'.

[...] Sorry to be so slow, but I struggle a lot with this sort of stuff.

[After several posts about how to do this involving system permissions, sudo, and updates probably overriding settings...]

I was hoping someone was going to tell me to change the values in one file or point me to a gui. It seems it's nowhere near that simple.
I use my PC all day, but the inside technical knowledge I need to do this is just way beyond me and quite frightening, as I have no idea of what's happening.
I think I'll leave it.

Altering position of notification panel [https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-mint-84/altering-position-of-notification-panel-4175689641/] "02-01-2021" (accessed 2024-10-26)

Ironically, I learned about this feature not by someone asking how to do it, but by someone trying to undo it!

I accidentally moved Notifications to the bottom right by toggling the switch in Notifications settings "Show Notifications on the bottom side of the screen" to "on". Then I toggled the switch "off" again, assuming the notifications would go back to the top right of the screen, but they have stayed at the bottom right. I toggled a few other of the Notification settings, but then put them all back to default, but nothing worked. I also tried removing / re-adding and updating the applets as well as resetting the Panel entirely, but no luck. I'm thinking I might have to go edit a config file by hand, maybe?

[SOLVED] Help needed with Desktop Notifications screen location by newlyminted7 [https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=338897] "Jan 02, 2021" (accessed 2024-10-26)