If I understand correctly, you have a remote server with a logfile, and some markers in this log file tells you whether the build is in process or finished. I

If I understand correctly, you have a remote server with a logfile, and some markers in this log file tells you whether the build is in process or finished. I would suggest you keep it simple and simply poll the logfile for the latest occurrence of either "Build started" or "Build finished" and display a pop-up for each case. Very roughly that would look like: while true do MATCH=$(ssh remote@host 'cat /logfile' | grep -P 'started|finished' | tail -1) case "$MATCH" in *started*) notify-send "Build started" ;; *finished*) notify-send "Build finished" ;; esac sleep 1s done That's dirty bash written in an HN comment on my phone, but the idea is here. It's a bit wasteful to initiate ssh sessions so often, so you could improve it with a single "ssh remote@host tail -f /logfile", pipe that to "grep", then to a while read, but I left that as an exercise. There is some option to notify-send so that pop-ups replace one another instead of creating new ones.