Polybar

Polybar is a fast and easy-to-use status bar. It allows building customizable status bars for various desktop environments. Currently, bspwm and i3wm are supported off the shelf.

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Installation

USE flags

USE flags for x11-misc/polybar A fast and easy-to-use tool for creating status bars

alsa	Add support for media-libs/alsa-lib (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)
curl	Add support for client-side URL transfer library
doc	Add extra documentation (API, Javadoc, etc). It is recommended to enable per package instead of globally
i3wm	Add support for i3 window manager
ipc	Add support for Inter-Process Messaging
mpd	Add support for Music Player Daemon
network	Enable network support
pulseaudio	Add sound server support via media-libs/libpulse (may be PulseAudio or PipeWire)

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2024-08-31 06:47 More information about USE flags

Emerge

root #emerge --ask x11-misc/polybar

Configuration

The Polybar package brings a sample configuration file which is installed at /usr/share/doc/polybar-*/config.bz2. This file demonstrates different configuration options, but is not a out of the box working configuration. Users need to assemble a working configuration themselves.

A working sample would look as follows:

FILE ~/.config/polybar/config

[bar/mybar]
modules-left = i3
modules-right = lan wlan filesystem cpu date
tray-position = right
font-0 = Noto Sans Mono:style=Regular

[colors]
black = #000
white = #fff
grey = #aaa
darkgrey = #555
red = #f00
green = #0f0

This declares a new bar called "mybar", and identifies which modules are being used and instructs Polybar to create a systray for hosting applets. The different modules (i3, lan, wlan, filesystem, cpu, and date), need to be defined further on in the configuration file, see below.

The optional section [colors] makes it easier to use colors in the different modules.

Date

The following section adds date and time to the bar.

FILE ~/.config/polybar/config

[module/date]
type = internal/date
;interval = 1
date = " | %d-%h-%y %H:%M:%

Increase the interval to reduce power consumption.

Filesystem

For monitoring the disk space utilization of various mount points:

FILE ~/.config/polybar/config

[module/filesystem]
type = internal/fs
interval = 60
mount-0 = /
mount-1 = /tmp
mount-2 = /data
label-mounted = %{F#0a81f5}%mountpoint%%{F-}: %percentage_used%%

LAN

The following section shows the network status for a wired LAN:

FILE ~/.config/polybar/config

[module/lan]
type = internal/network
interface = eth0
label-connected = "%ifname%: %local_ip% %local_ip6% | "
;label-disconnected = "%ifname%: not connected | "

Update the interface line as required.

WLAN

The Wifi wireless LAN section is almost identical as the wired LAN section, but has a few more things to show.

FILE ~/.config/polybar/config

[module/wlan]
type = internal/network
interface = wlan0
label-connected = "%ifname%: %essid% %signal%%  %{F#00F000}%local_ip% %{F#F000F0}%local_ip6% %{F-} | "
;label-disconnected = "%ifname%: not connected | "

CPU

To show processor utilization the following section can be used:

FILE ~/.config/polybar/config

[module/cpu]
type = internal/cpu
format = <label> <ramp-coreload>
label = " | CPU %percentage%%"
ramp-coreload-spacing = 1
ramp-coreload-0 = %{F#0a0}▁%{F-}
ramp-coreload-1 = %{F#0a0}▂%{F-}
ramp-coreload-2 = %{F#0a0}▃%{F-}
ramp-coreload-3 = %{F#0a0}▄%{F-}
ramp-coreload-4 = %{F#f80}▅%{F-}
ramp-coreload-5 = %{F#f80}▆%{F-}
ramp-coreload-6 = %{F#f00}▇%{F-}
ramp-coreload-7 = %{F#f00}█%{F-}

This section uses the ramp option to graphically show the utilization per core, showing low utilization as green, mid utilization as orange and high utilization as red. Note that the colors section cannot be reused here.

Integration with i3 window manager

Polybar can replace i3bar. This requires configuring Polybar for use with i3, creating a Polybar launch script, and updating the i3 configuration to use Polybar.

Configure Polybar's i3 module

In case Polybar is used with the i3 window manager the following can be used to configure the Polybar's i3 module:

FILE ~/.config/polybar/config

[module/i3]
type = internal/i3

label-focused = %index%
label-focused-background = ${colors.darkgrey}
label-focused-foreground = ${colors.white}
label-focused-underline= ${colors.primary}
label-focused-padding = 1

label-unfocused = %index%
label-unfocused-foreground = ${colors.grey}
label-unfocused-padding = 1

label-urgent = %index%
label-urgent-foreground = ${colors.white}
label-urgent-background = ${colors.red}
label-urgent-padding = 1

Create a Polybar launch script

FILE ~/.config/polybar/launch

#!/bin/bash

# Terminate already running bar instances
killall -q polybar
# If all your bars have ipc enabled, you can also use 
# polybar-msg cmd quit

# Launch Polybar, using default config location ~/.config/polybar/config
polybar mybar 2>&1 | tee -a /tmp/polybar.log & disown

echo "Polybar launched..."

Update the i3 configuration to use Polybar

Comment out the following section that starts i3bar, and add a statement to launch Polybar:

FILE ~/.config/i3/config

# Start i3bar to display a workspace bar (plus the system information i3status
# finds out, if available)
#bar {
#       font pango:DejaVu Sans Mono 10
#       position top
#        status_command i3status
#}
# use Polybar instead of i3bar
exec_always --no-startup-id ~/.config/polybar/launch

Removal

To remove Polybar issue the following:

root #emerge --ask --depclean --verbose x11-misc/polybar

Do not forget to remove the added files under ~/.config/polybar/ and to restore the i3bar section in ~/.config/i3/config.

See also

• bspwm — a lightweight, tiling, minimalist window manager written in C, which organizes its windows as nodes of a binary tree.
• i3 — a minimalist tiling window manager, completely written from scratch.