🔔 Sounds and notifications
Choosing the alarm sound, tuning the desktop banner and making it open a link.
When a timer fires, ding does two independent things: it plays an alarm through afplay, and it posts a macOS desktop notification. Each can be changed or switched off on its own.
Alarm sound
--sound <value> (-s) takes one of four kinds of value. The default is bell.
| Kind | Examples |
|---|---|
| Built-in preset | beep, digital, radar, bell, siren, chime |
| Clock ringtone | Daybreak, Radial, Arpeggio, "Milky Way" |
| macOS system sound | Glass, Ping |
| Audio file path | ~/Downloads/alert.aiff |
The presets are synthesised by ding itself, so they need no files. Ringtones and system sounds are read from macOS. Quote any name that contains a space.
In the foreground the chosen sound loops until you press a key. --no-sound turns the alarm off entirely.
ding 5h "wake" --sound Daybreak
ding 5h "wake" --sound "Milky Way"
ding 20m "deploy done" --sound ~/Downloads/alert.aiffDesktop notification
| Flag | Effect |
|---|---|
--no-notify | Skip the notification |
--title <text> | Banner title (default ding) |
--subtitle <text> | Banner subtitle |
--icon <path> | Absolute path to a custom icon image |
--notify-sound <name> | The banner's own macOS sound, such as Glass or Ping |
--open <url> | URL opened when the banner is clicked |
--notify-sound is separate from --sound. The first is the sound macOS attaches to the banner; the second is the alarm ding plays itself. Use both, or silence either.
--open must start with http:// or https://. Anything else prints an error and exits with status 1 before the timer starts.
ding 5h "quota is back" --open https://claude.ai --subtitle "Anthropic"
ding 30m "stand-up" --notify-sound GlassNotifications go through node-notifier, which bundles its own terminal-notifier, so there is nothing extra to install.