windows 10 - Scriptable way to add notification to Action Center?

Question

Mac has a way to post, from command line, a notification.

Is there a Windows 10 equivalent to putting a simple notification into the Action Center?

Answer 1

First, use the following function with -Message to generate a slide out toast notification for PowerShell.

function New-ToastMessage
{
<#
        .SYNOPSIS
        Displays a toast notification with a message and optional image.
        .DESCRIPTION
        Displays a toast notification with a message and optional image.
        .PARAMETER message
        The text message you want to display in your toast.
        .PARAMETER ActionCentre
        Send this to the action centre.
        .PARAMETER image
        An image that you wish to display alongside the message.
        .EXAMPLE
        New-ToastMessage -message "Alert: Disk Space Low (5%)" -image 'C:UsersRobinDocumentsdisk-low.png'
        .EXAMPLE
         New-ToastMessage -message "Alert: Disk Space Low (5%)" -image "C:UsersRobinDocumentsdisk-low.png" -ActionCenter
        .NOTES
        Author: Robin Malik
#>

param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true,HelpMessage = 'Toast Message?')]
    [String]
    $Message,

    [Parameter(HelpMessage = 'Send to action centre')]
    [Switch]
    $ActionCentre,

    [Parameter(Mandatory = $false,HelpMessage = 'Path to image?')]
    [String]
    $Image
)

$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'

$notificationTitle = [DateTime]::Now.ToShortTimeString() + ': ' + $Message

[Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastNotificationManager, Windows.UI.Notifications, ContentType = WindowsRuntime] > $null

if($Image)
{
    $templateType = 'ToastImageAndText01'
}
else
{
    $templateType = 'ToastText01'
}

$template = [Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastNotificationManager]::GetTemplateContent([Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastTemplateType]::$templateType)

#Convert to .NET type for XML manipuration
$toastXml = [xml]$template.GetXml()

if($Image)
{
    $toastXml.GetElementsByTagName('image').SetAttribute('src',$Image) > $null
    $toastXml.GetElementsByTagName('image').SetAttribute('alt','overlay text') > $null
}
$toastXml.GetElementsByTagName('text').AppendChild($toastXml.CreateTextNode($notificationTitle)) > $null

#Convert back to WinRT type
$xml = New-Object -TypeName Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlDocument
$xml.LoadXml($toastXml.OuterXml)

$toast = [Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastNotification]::new($xml)
$toast.Tag = 'PowerShell'
$toast.Group = 'PowerShell'
$toast.ExpirationTime = [DateTimeOffset]::Now.AddMinutes(5)
if($actioncentre)
{
    $toast.SuppressPopup = $true
}
$notifier = [Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastNotificationManager]::CreateToastNotifier('PowerShell')
$notifier.Show($toast)
}

You will then be able to see PowerShell under the Windows 10 Settings > System > Notifications & actions > Get Notifications from these senders.

Click PowerShell and enable 'Show notifications in Action Centre', like so:

Finally, you can call the above function with the -ActionCentre switch to send it there instead.