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How to change OS X banner notification duration using Terminal

Notification Banner

I’ve recently found myself wishing there was a space between banners and alerts with OS X’s notification system. Alert style notifications that require manually dismissing can be rather annoying, but quick banner notifications often fly by before I’ve had time to glance at the information. It turns out despite not having a toggle in the system preferences, a little Terminal code shared by OS X Daily allows you to toggle the duration down to the second…

Ported from iOS, Notification Center is intended to catch all these notifications in one central location for skimming, but it’s a messy place without a lot of customization.

Notifications in System Preferences does offer a number of customization settings, but banner duration is noticeably absent from the preference pane.

NotificationsTo get around this and change the banner duration, open Terminal and paste in the script “defaults write com.apple.notificationcenterui bannerTime #” with the number sign replaced with the amount of seconds you want banner notifications to stick around, then log off and back on.

Terminal

If you decide to alter the duration back to OS X’s default choice, simply paste “defaults delete com.apple.notificationcenterui bannerTime” and log off and back on again.

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Comments

  1. Adrian Manea - 10 years ago

    Excellent tip, thank you! I was really looking for something like this. Now, if I were to go a step further, is there any way to do this selectively? I mean to change the banner display time for a specific app only (say, Mail.app)?

    Thanks.

  2. Adam Potts - 10 years ago

    THANK YOU! I’ve been searching for a way to do this ever since upgrading. My main monitor is old and takes a while to turn on. By the time the screen came on, my notifications were always either gone already or in the process of disappearing. I don’t want to get rid of the monitor because it has very good color rendering, which is important for editing photography. You just saved me a lot of headache.

  3. thebuzzer67 - 9 years ago

    Did someone found how to lower this bar?

Author

Avatar for Zac Hall Zac Hall

Zac covers Apple news, hosts the 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast, and created SpaceExplored.com.