Last month we told you that Google Chrome might start using native notifications on Linux — and now the first bit of code to enable this has landed.
Which I guess turns that earlier “might” into a more certain “is”.
Yup, Google is getting super serious about making Chrome on Linux (and other OSes) a proper first-class citizen.
Having already landed enhanced GTK3 support, Chromium devs are now kitting the browser out with support for native Linux desktop notifications.
As this code commit from earlier today shows:
Add initial support for native Linux desktop notifications This CL adds a stub implementation of NotificationPlatformBridgeLinux, which is responsible for communicating notification changes to the desktop environment via D-Bus. Once this class is fully implemented, it is intended to be used by default when the host supports notifications.
At present (like Firefox on certain distros) Google Chrome and its open-source counterpart Chromium uses its own custom notification system to deliver download notifications, extension alerts and web push toasts.
For a while this was part of Google’s plan to repurpose Chrome as a platform. You may remember (probably with disdain) that Chrome had its own notification centre at one point, hidden behind a bell icon.
With Google taking Chrome back to basics, focusing on being a window on the web rather than a house the web has to walk through, it’s paring back its own versions to use native notifications on all operating systems.
You can track the whole saga in this Chromium bug report.