Waiting for a GitHub Actions build to finish can feel like watching paint dry... in slow motion... underwater. You push your code, lean back, open a tab for YouTube, and suddenly it's an hour later and you’re three conspiracy videos deep wondering if the moon is hollow — only to realize your build failed 57 minutes ago. Wouldn’t it be nice if something just told you what happened?
What is ntfy.sh?
ntfy is a simple and effective notification service that lets you send push notifications to your phone or desktop via a pub-sub model — using just HTTP. You can post messages to a topic (aka a “channel”), and any device or browser subscribed to that topic receives the notification in real-time. So that you know exactly where your 400 package react native build failed while you're on the toilet.
It’s perfect for:
- Getting alerts when your GitHub Actions build finishes (or fails in dramatic fashion).
- Letting you walk away from CI logs and touch grass without missing a beat.
- Automating all kinds of pings for jobs, scripts, or commands that take an eternity.
To get started, download the ntfy mobile app from your app store, and subscribe to the topic (i.e., the channel name like your-ntfy-subchannel) you’ll be sending to. Boom - you're in the loop.
Below are two GitHub Actions snippets:
- A simple implementation to notify on pass/fail.
- A more thorough version that tries to explain why things broke — with the same ntfy magic.
Simple ntfy implementation for pass/fail of a build
- name: ntfy-success-notifications 🔔✅
if: success()
run: |
curl \
-H 'X-Title: Build Successful' \
-H 'Attach: http://www.quickmeme.com/img/14/14c0f057abec6dabfc5be48cbbd0d904fef889a8781eee667984089207daf998.jpg' \
-H 'Tags: heavy_check_mark,partying_face' \
-d 'Build and deployment completed successfully' \
https://ntfy.sh/your-ntfy-subchannel
- name: ntfy-failed-notifications 🔔❌
if: failure()
run: |
curl \
-H 'X-Title: Build failed' \
-H 'Tags: x,skull' \
-d Build failed for commit with the message '\''${{ github.event.head_commit.message }}'\'' ' \
https://ntfy.sh/your-ntfy-subchannel
A more thorough set of checks
- name: failure check - installing dependencies
if: failure() && steps.install_node_dependencies.outcome == 'failure'
run: echo "FAIL_REASON=Failed to install node.js dependencies" >> $GITHUB_ENV
- name: failure check - building app
if: failure() && steps.build_app.outcome == 'failure'
run: echo "FAIL_REASON=Failed to build the app" >> $GITHUB_ENV
- name: failure check - ftp deploy
if: failure() && steps.ftp_deploy.outcome == 'failure'
run: echo "FAIL_REASON=Failed to deploy to cPanel" >> $GITHUB_ENV
- name: ntfy-success-notifications 🔔✅
if: success()
run: |
curl \
-H 'X-Title: Build Successful' \
-H 'Attach: http://www.quickmeme.com/img/14/14c0f057abec6dabfc5be48cbbd0d904fef889a8781eee667984089207daf998.jpg' \
-H 'Tags: heavy_check_mark,partying_face' \
-d 'Build and deployment completed successfully' \
https://ntfy.sh/your-ntfy-subchannel
- name: ntfy-failed-notifications 🔔❌
if: failure()
run: |
curl \
-H 'X-Title: Build failed' \
-H 'Tags: x,skull' \
-d '${{env.FAIL_REASON}} for commit with the message '\''${{ github.event.head_commit.message }}'\'' ' \
https://ntfy.sh/your-ntfy-subchannel
