Polybar
Version: 3.1.0 Web: https://github.com/jaagr/polybar
There are various ways you can add more eye-candy to your desktop, so after giving LatteDock its moment in the spotlight earlier on, we decided to explore a different tool for customising your workplace. Polybar is a compact application for constructing status bars to be used in minimalistic, custom-made desktops together with something like the i3 tiled window manager.
Panels made with Polybar can display sensors, indicators and other possible modules. You can populate your bar with lots of useful information, including the current window’s name, CPU load, battery level, wireless network name and status, date and time and so on. A typical Polybar panel is very thin and uses a small, compact font. This means you can fit plenty of modules into a limited space.
We’d say Polybar is a program of an intermediate difficulty level. This means that after installation you won’t get anything after just executing the polybar command. First, you’ll need a working configuration file, and a good starting point is to use an example that comes bundled with Polybar: $ install -Dm644 /usr/share/doc/ polybar/config ~/.config/polybar/config
After that, launch $ polybar example to make the top bar appear. Here, the ‘example’ is the name of the bar, which you can find in the bar/example line of your config.
The number of settings that you can change is mind-blowing, although it takes time to set everything up correctly. You can play with colours and fonts, make different bars on your multi-monitor setup, customise margins, add an MPD player status and more. The configuration file accepts standard INI-like formatting, where each line is a setting with a value.
Before you become skilled in mastering a perfect bar, consider learning best practices from other users. Polybar’s popularity has been growing lately, so there are some great working configs at website such as http://dotshare.it.
“The number of settings that you can change is mind-blowing”