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DontWaitUp is a new application which allows you to assign an action when a window is closed, its title changes or when it's resized. You can use it for instance to shut down or suspend your computer when a video finishes playing, when some download manager (which doesn't have this feature built-in) finishes downloading a large file and so on.

Here's how it works: when you launch DontWaitUp, a list of open windows is displayed on the Events tab and you can assign an action for each of these windows:

DontWaitUp

... when the window title changes, when the window is resized (e.g. when a video player exits full-screen after it finishes playing a video) or when the window is closed, DontWaitUp triggers your assigned action. 

DontWaitUp actions

By default, DontWaitUp ships with the following actions: shut down, restart, suspend, hibernate or play a sound, but you can add your own custom actions (commands). For each action, you can select to display an optional confirmation window or to directly run the action.

DontWaitUp comes with an optional Ubuntu AppIndicator which can be disabled from its preferences. In its preferences, you can also configure for how long the confirmation/abort dialog is displayed (if enabled) and if system windows should be displayed or not:

DontWaitUp indicator settings

Right now, the application is pretty basic and doesn't allow you to manually enter the window title on which an action should be triggered (so you can't run actions for applications with dynamic titles, when a specific title comes up - as an example, the application won't be able to perform an action when a music player stops playing if its window title changes for each new song or if the window title displays the remaining time).

But, even though the application is pretty simple and it doesn't offer too many actions by default right now, it can still prove to be very useful in various situations and I'm sure some of you will need an application like this at some point.


Install DontWaitUp in Ubuntu / Linux Mint


DontWaitUp is available in a PPA for Ubuntu / Linux Mint (and derivatives) users. Add the PPA and install the application using the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alessandro-blarco/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dontwaitup consolekit
If you don't want to add the PPA, grab the deb from HERE (but you won't get automatic updates if you don't add the PPA).

Download the source code, report bugs, etc. @ Launchpad.