OSC 9 — Toast notification (iTerm2 / Windows Terminal)

Trigger a native OS desktop notification from the terminal — long-running job done, build finished, etc.

Byte forms

Every common string-literal form so you can paste-and-search either direction.

\\x1b[\x1b]9;MESSAGE\x07

\\033[\033]9;MESSAGE\007

\\e[\e]9;MESSAGE\a

ESC [ESC ] 9 ; MESSAGE BEL

hex1b 5d 39 3b ... 07

Description

Raise a system-tray / Notification Center / KNotifications toast with the given message string. Originally iTerm2's `iTerm2 growl` mechanism (the OSC 9 alias dates to the Growl daemon era on macOS); Windows Terminal adopted the same control later. The terminal forwards the payload to the host OS notification API — the user sees a banner outside the terminal window, useful for long compiles, `make && say done` substitutes, CI pollers. Unsupported terminals drop the entire OSC 9 frame silently, so it is safe to emit unconditionally. Caveat: ConEmu repurposes OSC 9 as its progress-bar protocol (`\x1b]9;4;<state>;<percent>\x07`) — a different scheme — so check your terminal docs before sending complex OSC 9 payloads.

Spec citation: iTerm2 Proprietary Escape Codes (OSC 9) / Windows Terminal

Examples

bash

make && printf '\033]9;build finished\007'

python

import sys; sys.stdout.write('\x1b]9;build finished\x07')

fmt.Print("\x1b]9;build finished\x07")

javascript

process.stdout.write('\x1b]9;build finished\x07')

printf("\x1b]9;build finished\x07");

Terminal support

xterm: no
Linux console (fbcon): no
macOS Terminal.app: no
iTerm2: yes
Windows Terminal: yes
cmd.exe / ConPTY: no
kitty: no
alacritty: no
WezTerm: yes
Ghostty: yes
GNOME Terminal: no
Konsole: partial
tmux: no
GNU screen: no

xterm	Linux console (fbcon)	macOS Terminal.app	iTerm2	Windows Terminal	cmd.exe / ConPTY	kitty	alacritty	WezTerm	Ghostty	GNOME Terminal	Konsole	tmux	GNU screen
no	no	no	yes	yes	no	no	no	yes	yes	no	partial	no	no

Related sequences

In the family cookbook

OSC cookbook · 6. Inline images & progress — `OSC 1337` and `OSC 9 ; 4`