This is quick tutorial for those who want to view the desktop notifications history in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

It can be done by either enabling logging notifications for Notify-OSD, or using Recent Notifications, a simple system panel applet.

View recent notifications via an indicator applet:

There’s a GNOME applet that displays a list of recent notifications on system panel.

To install the applet, go to:

Download indicator-notifications GTK 3

Select install the latest version of:

• indicator-notifications_x.x.x~xenial_amd64.deb for 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04
• indicator-notifications_x.x.x~xenial_i386.deb for 32-bit Ubuntu 16.04

There’s also a GTK2 version available for download at this page.

Once installed, log out and log in back to see the applet on panel.

Tips:

1. The applet displays up to 5 messages, to change the number of visible items, edit the config file: ‘usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/net.launchpad.indicator.notifications.gschema.xml’

2. To remove the applet, use Synaptic Package Manager or run command sudo apt remove indicator-notifications in terminal

Enable Logging notifications:

Another way is to log notifications history into a file. Here’s how to do it for single user in Ubuntu 16.04:

1. Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), run command to open (or create if not exist) a user-local script:

gedit ~/.pam_environment

When the file opens, paste the line below and save it.

LOG DEFAULT=1

2. After restart your computer, a new file “notify-osd.log” will be created in user’s Home -> .cache folder that logs notifications history.