Ntfy Notifications

Overview

• Source: https://ntfy.sh/
• Image Support: No
• Attachment Support: Yes
• Message Character Limits:
  • Body: 32768
• Build Your Apprise URL

Account Setup

Ntfy is an easy to use messaging service that supports both public cloud usage (https://ntfy.sh) and self-hosted private servers.

Apprise supports both insecure (ntfy://) and secure (ntfys://) schemas.

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Syntax

Ntfy can send notifications through the following modes:

• private: A locally hosted private server https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy
• cloud: A setup pointing to https://ntfy.sh

Valid syntax is as follows:

• ntfy://{topic}
• ntfy://{host}/{topic}
• ntfy://{host}:{port}/{topics}
• ntfy://{user}@{host}/{topics}
• ntfy://{user}@{host}:{port}/{topics}
• ntfy://{user}:{password}@{host}/{topics}
• ntfy://{user}:{password}@{host}:{port}/{topics}
• ntfy://{token}@{hostname}/{topics}

The secure versions:

• ntfys://{topic}
• ntfys://{host}/{topic}
• ntfys://{host}:{port}/{topics}
• ntfys://{user}@{host}/{topics}
• ntfys://{user}@{host}:{port}/{topics}
• ntfys://{user}:{password}@{host}/{topics}
• ntfys://{user}:{password}@{host}:{port}/{topics}
• ntfys://{token}@{hostname}/{topics}

You can specify more than one topic:

• ntfy://{user}:{password}@{hostname}/{topic1}/{topic2}

Parameter Breakdown

Variable	Required	Description
user	No	The user account to authenticate with.
password	No	The password used for authentication.
hostname	No	The ntfy server to send notifications to.
port	No	Defaults to 80 for ntfy:// and 443 for ntfys://.
topic	Yes	At least one topic must be defined.
token	No	Authorization token (auto-detected if provided in URL).
mode	No	Authentication mode. Auto-detected. Possible values: private, cloud.
auth	No	basic (default) or token.
email	No	Associate an email address with the ntfy post.
tags	No	ntfy message tags to associate with the notification. Use comma and/or space to specify more than one. These are not to be confused with Apprise tags; see here for more details.
attach	No	URL pointing to a remote attachment to reference.
filename	No	Override the attachment filename.
click	No	Hyperlink users are directed to when clicking the notification.
priority	No	One of max, high, default, low, or min. Defaults to default.
actions	No	ntfy action button definitions.
delay	No	Delay message delivery.
image	No	Defaults to Yes; includes image preview when available.
avatar_url	No	Override the Apprise icon with a custom image URL.

If your Ntfy server is behind an HTTPS (Secure) hosted setup, then you simply use ntfys://:

Global Parameters

Variable	Description
overflow	This parameter can be set to either split, truncate, or upstream. This determines how Apprise delivers the message you pass it. By default this is set to upstream 👉 upstream: Do nothing at all; pass the message exactly as you received it to the service. 👉 truncate: Ensure that the message will fit within the service’s documented upstream message limit. If more information was passed then the defined limit, the overhead information is truncated. 👉 split: similar to truncate except if the message doesn’t fit within the service’s documented upstream message limit, it is split into smaller chunks and they are all delivered sequentially there-after.
format	This parameter can be set to either text, html, or markdown. Some services support the ability to post content by several different means. The default of this varies (it can be one of the 3 mentioned at any time depending on which service you choose). You can optionally force this setting to stray from the defaults if you wish. If the service doesn’t support different types of transmission formats, then this field is ignored.
verify	External requests made to secure locations (such as through the use of https) will have certificates associated with them. By default, Apprise will verify that these certificates are valid; if they are not then no notification will be sent to the source. In some occasions, a user might not have a certificate authority to verify the key against or they trust the source; in this case you will want to set this flag to no. By default it is set to yes.
cto	This stands for Socket Connect Timeout. This is the number of seconds Requests will wait for your client to establish a connection to a remote machine (corresponding to the connect()) call on the socket. The default value is 4.0 seconds.
rto	This stands for Socket Read Timeout. This is the number of seconds the client will wait for the server to send a response. The default value is 4.0 seconds.
emojis	Enable Emoji support (such as providing :+1: would translate to 👍). By default this is set to no. Note: Depending on server side settings, the administrator has the power to disable emoji support at a global level; but default this is not the case.
tz	Identify the IANA Time Zone Database you wish to operate as. By default this is detected based on the configuration the server hosting Apprise is running on. You can set this to things like America/Toronto, or any other properly formated Timezone describing your area.

Ntfy Tags vs Apprise Tags

The tags= parameter above refers to ntfy message tags only.

These tags are sent directly to the ntfy server and appear as labels or emojis on the delivered notification.

They are not the same as Apprise routing tags.

Apprise routing tags are configured in your Apprise configuration file (using tag: or tags: in YAML) and control which notification services are triggered. They do not modify ntfy’s tags= parameter.

Below is an example of a Ntfy message being sent that includes tags:

apprise -vv -t "Failure" -b "Something went wrong" \
   "ntfy://localhost/mytopic?priority=high&tags=warning"

Below is an example that furthers onto the above by showing multiple (Ntfy) tags are supported too:

apprise -vv -t "Alert" -b "Disk space low" \
   "ntfy://localhost/mytopic?priority=high&tags=warning,storage"

the Apprise YAML configuration files can sometimes introduce confusion since it also uses tags as well. Below shows the clear separation between Apprise tags and Ntfy tags.

apprise.yaml

urls:
  - ntfy://localhost/mytopic?priority=high&tags=warning:
      tag: ntfy-alert

In the example above:

• tags=warning: Ntfy message tag

• tag: ntfy-alert Apprise routing tag; this would later be expected to be triggered by:

  apprise -vv -t "Alert" -b "Disk space low" \
     --tag=ntfy-alert --config=apprise.yaml

Examples

Send a notification to a local Ntfy server:

# Assuming our {hostname} is localhost
# Assuming our {topic} is great-place
apprise -vv -t "Test Message Title" -b "Test Message Body" \
   ntfy://localhost/great-place

We can also send a notification to the ntfy.sh (cloud) server:

# Assuming our {topic} is great-place
apprise -vv -t "Test Message Title" -b "Test Message Body" \
   ntfy://great-place

Ntfy also supports Markdown; if you want to leverage this, simply add ?format=markdown to your Apprise URL; eg:

# Assuming our {hostname} is localhost
# Assuming our {topic} is great-place
# Assuming we want to leverage the markdown support
apprise -vv -t "Test Message Title" -b "# Markdown Support" \
   "ntfy://localhost/great-place?format=markdown"

Secure HTTPS usage:

# Assuming our SECURE {hostname} is localhost
# Assuming our {topic} is great-topic
apprise -vv -t "Test Secure Message Title" -b "Test Message Body" \
   ntfys://localhost/great-topic

Using ntfy action buttons:

apprise -vv -t "Title" -b "Message content" \
    ntfy://ntfy.selfhostedexample.com/mytopic?actions=view%2CGoogle%2Chttps://www.google.com%3Bview%2CBing%2Chttps://www.bing.com