~/.lxmd/config has these lines:

You can configure an external program to be run

every time a message is received. The program

will receive as an argument the full path to the

message saved as a file. The example below will

simply result in the message getting deleted as

soon as it has been received.

on_inbound = rm

So when I start lxmd first, I should be able to do what I want whenever "I" receive a message. Including displaying a notification on my desktop. Even when sideband or nomadnet is also running. Correct?

A small update: I found out that when I want to receive a message cached in the propagation network I have to create an explicit request (either automatically by the program or explicitly by the user/ by me). I never had one of the programs online long enough to get the automatic request (I guess), so this request never happened and I never saw a message arrived that had been given to the propagation network. I was using sideband and nomadnet. Now that worked.

Maybe this information is useful for others that find this thread so I just wanted to share.

The names of the related options contain the words "lxmf" and "sync".
The defaults will lead to a sync every 6 hours, and AFAICT, for
nomadnet and sideband there currently is no automatic sync at startup.

lxmd is a separate application that is mainly used to host propagation nodes(the things you sync from)
on_inbound will just run the.. actually im not sure.

@burger: Thanks for pointing me to this. I too think that my lxmd does nothing all the time, it is not involved in anything I do. AFAIU is has an associated separate identity and doesn't deliver messages to gui programs.

I could let it receive messages for a separate identity I guess. But anyway - the popups from sideband look quite nice (recognizable). I think I will just remove lxmd from my setup.

No, I spoke too soon, I must correct myself:

I tested to send lxmf messages with sideband, nomadnet and meshchatx on my laptop (i.e. all running on the same hardware). While the behavior of the latter two didn't change, sideband suddenly did not propagate to the selected propagation node any more. Tested several times. Sitently fails. And starting lxmd up again, it magically works again.

I haven't checked if some setting in sideband would make a difference (or even a reinstall), or if the other tested programs simply succeeded with p2p. But indeed lxmd seems to be used by some other reticulum processes on my system.

I had reinstalled sideband after installing lxmf separately. Maybe sideband then picked the id associated with my running lxmd router so it now depends on it running. Or something like that. With lxmd not running I could receive messages in sideband, though. But I could not send. The three programs I mentioned above are all associated with a different user.