Want to customise the notification position in Ubuntu?
You’re not alone. This is a question a lot of users ask. In this post I show you a pair of nifty GNOME extensions you can install that let you choose where on-screen notification bubbles appear.
Before we do that, let’s talk defaults: Ubuntu shows notification banners at the top of the screen, under the clock (as in upstream GNOME Shell). This position makes sense within GNOME Shell as the top of the screen is where status bar items sit, and notification toasts live in the calendar applet (accessed by clicking the clock).
But you are not everyone.
If you want to move notifications to the top right of your display (which is where Ubuntu used to show notification bubbles, and where other OSes still do) you can install the Notification Banner Position extension.
This extension does one thing and one thing only: moves notifications to the top right:
But what if you want to move notification banner position to a different part of the screen, like the bottom?
If you’re on Ubuntu 21.10 or above you can use the Notification Banner Reloaded extension instead. This extension is more advanced, and gives you a wider choice of notification positioning, with options to choose top, centre, or bottom, and left, or right positions:
Also, you can also change the notification animation using Notification Banner Reloaded. For example, you can make notification banners slide in from the side of the display. Animation speed is also configurable so you can make these effects happen as fast or as slow as you like:
Finally, if you already use the Just Perfection extension — this is a comprehensive all-in-one GNOME Shell tweak suite — you don’t need to install anything mention here: open the Just Perfection settings window, scroll down to Customise > Notification Banner Position, and set your preference.
Whichever approach you take, it’s easy to change notification position in Ubuntu (and on other Linux distributions that use GNOME Shell) without having to edit configuration files, compile patches, or (rather more dramatically) switch desktop environment!
Let me know which location you prefer down in the comments!