Cross-platform filesystem notification library for Rust.

(Looking for desktop notifications instead? Have a look at notify-rust or alert-after!)

• API Documentation
• Debouncer Documentation
• Examples
• Crate page
• Changelog
• Upgrading from v4
• Earliest supported Rust version: 1.56
• incomplete Guides and in-depth docs

As used by: alacritty, cargo watch, cobalt, docket, mdBook, pax, rdiff, rust-analyzer, timetrack, watchexec, xi-editor, watchfiles, and others.

• Linux / Android: inotify
• macOS: FSEvents or kqueue, see features
• Windows: ReadDirectoryChangesW
• FreeBSD / NetBSD / OpenBSD / DragonflyBSD: kqueue
• All platforms: polling

Due to the inner security model of FSEvents (see FileSystemEventSecurity), some events cannot be observed easily when trying to follow files that do not belong to you. In this case, reverting to the pollwatcher can fix the issue, with a slight performance cost.

Notify was undergoing a transition to using the Artistic License 2.0 from CC Zero 1.0. A part of the code is only under CC0, and another part, including all new code since commit 3378ac5a, is under both CC0 and Artistic. When the project was to be entirely free of CC0 code, the license would be formally changed (and that would have incurred a major version bump). As part of this, contributions to Notify since would agree to release under both.

Inspired by Go's fsnotify and Node.js's Chokidar, born out of need for cargo watch, and general frustration at the non-existence of C/Rust cross-platform notify libraries.

Originally created by Félix Saparelli and awesome contributors.