How to get notified when Claude Code finishes

Long Claude Code runs are perfect for stepping away — until you forget to come back. Here's how to get a native desktop notification the instant a session completes or errors, so you can context-switch with confidence.

Two ways to know when a run finishes

Sessionly watches your sessions and posts native notifications. It works in two layers:

• Built-in monitoring — Sessionly tracks session activity and surfaces it on the live dashboard.
• Claude Code hooks — for precise, instant signals, an opt-in hook tells Sessionly the exact moment a session stops.

Set it up

1. 1

   Install and open Sessionly

   Download Sessionly for your platform and launch it. It runs quietly with a system-tray presence and reads your sessions from ~/.claude.

2. 2

   Allow notifications

   On first launch, grant the OS notification permission when prompted. This lets Sessionly post native desktop alerts.

3. 3

   Enable the Claude Code hook (one click)

   In Sessionly’s settings, enable the Claude Code hook integration. It writes a hook into your Claude Code settings that streams session events to Sessionly locally — no manual config editing.

4. 4

   Choose what notifies you

   Toggle per-event preferences: get alerted on session completion, on tool errors, or both. Smart cooldown de-duplication prevents notification storms.

How the hook works

Claude Code fires lifecycle events as it works. Sessionly listens on the Stop event — the moment a session finishes — and maps Claude Code events to session states:

• PreToolUse / PostToolUse → Working
• PostToolUseFailure → Error (notifies)
• Stop → Completed (notifies)

Enabling the integration adds a hook to your Claude Code settings that streams events to Sessionly on your local machine. Conceptually it looks like this:

// ~/.claude/settings.json
"hooks": {
  "Stop": [{
    "matcher": "*",
    "hooks": [{
      "type": "command",
      "command": "curl -s -X POST \
        -d @- http://127.0.0.1:19823/hook"
    }]
  }]
}

You don't have to write this yourself — Sessionly installs and manages it for you, and it runs alongside any hooks you already have.