If you happen to be on OS X, you can fire a notification into Notification Center from the terminal. osascript -e 'display notification "that thing is done

If you happen to be on OS X, you can fire a notification into Notification Center from the terminal. osascript -e 'display notification "that thing is done" with title "my awesome title"' iTerm2 has a similar feature called Triggers [1]. [1]: https://www.iterm2.com/documentation-triggers.html https://www.iterm2.com/documentation-triggers.html