UrgencyHook lets you configure an action to occur when a window demands your attention. (In traditional WMs, this takes the form of "flashing" on your "taskbar." Blech.)

To wire this up, first add:

import XMonad.Hooks.UrgencyHook

to your import list in your config file. Now, you have a decision to make: When a window deems itself urgent, do you want to pop up a temporary dzen bar telling you so, or do you have an existing dzen wherein you would like to highlight urgent workspaces?

Enable your urgency hook by wrapping your config record in a call to withUrgencyHook. For example:

main = xmonad $ withUrgencyHook dzenUrgencyHook { args = ["-bg", "darkgreen", "-xs", "1"] }
              $ def

This will pop up a dzen bar for five seconds telling you you've got an urgent window.

In order for xmonad to track urgent windows, you must install an urgency hook. You can use the above dzenUrgencyHook, or if you're not interested in the extra popup, install NoUrgencyHook, as so:

main = xmonad $ withUrgencyHook NoUrgencyHook
              $ def

Now, your XMonad.Hooks.StatusBar.PP must be set up to display the urgent windows. If you're using the dzen (from XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog) or dzenPP functions from that module, then you should be good. Otherwise, you want to figure out how to set ppUrgent.

You can set up a keybinding to jump to the window that was recently marked urgent. See an example at focusUrgent.

There are three steps to get right:

1. The X client must set the UrgencyHint flag. How to configure this depends on the application. If you're using a terminal app, this is in two parts:

   • The console app must send a ^G (bell). In bash, a helpful trick is sleep 1; echo -e '\a'.
   • The terminal must convert the bell into UrgencyHint.
2. XMonad must be configured to notice UrgencyHints. If you've added withUrgencyHook, you may need to hit mod-shift-space to reset the layout.
3. The dzen must run when told. Run dzen2 -help and make sure that it supports all of the arguments you told DzenUrgencyHook to pass it. Also, set up a keybinding to the dzen action in XMonad.Util.Dzen to test if that works.

As best you can, try to isolate which one(s) of those is failing.

This is a commonly asked example. By default, the window doesn't get flagged urgent when somebody messages you in irssi. You will have to configure some things. If you're using different tools than this, your mileage will almost certainly vary. (For example, in Xchat2, it's just a simple checkbox.)

Irssi is not an X11 app, so it can't set the UrgencyHint flag on XWMHints. However, on all console applications is bestown the greatest of all notification systems: the bell. That's right, Ctrl+G, ASCII code 7, echo -e 'a', your friend, the bell. To configure irssi to send a bell when you receive a message:

/set beep_msg_level MSGS NOTICES INVITES DCC DCCMSGS HILIGHT

Consult your local irssi documentation for more detail.

A common way to run irssi is within the lovable giant, screen. Some distros (e.g. Ubuntu) like to configure screen to trample on your poor console applications -- in particular, to turn bell characters into evil, smelly "visual bells." To turn this off, add:

vbell off # or remove the existing 'vbell on' line

to your .screenrc, or hit C-a C-g within a running screen session for an immediate but temporary fix.

Rubber, meet road. Urxvt is the gateway between console apps and X11. To tell urxvt to set an UrgencyHint when it receives a bell character, first, have an urxvt version 8.3 or newer, and second, set the following in your .Xdefaults:

urxvt.urgentOnBell: true

Depending on your setup, you may need to xrdb that.

Hopefully you already read the section on how to configure xmonad. If not, hopefully you know where to find it.