Polybar-01

polybar is an awesome and super customizable status bar for your desktop environment.

I use it with i3-gaps on Ubuntu for work and it makes my day just that much better to have a clean and elegant bar with the things in it that I care about.

The GitHub has all the instructions you'd need to install and get started with an example.

I want to make some notes about how I use polybar and customize it.

Organization

First of all, I recently moved my polybar config out of one config file into a modular structure that keeps my config files small and easiser to edit.

You can find my config here

The apps or services you put into polybar are called modules. I have moved all of my modules into their own config files and I source them with one centralized include-modules.ini config.

This separation also makes it easier for me to keep my home and work polybars as in sync as possible without duplicating a ton of config!

./polybar
├── colors.ini
├── config.ini
├── fonts.ini
├── home-modules.ini
├── include-modules.ini
├── launch.sh
├── modules
│   ├── aws.ini
│   ├── battery.ini
│   ├── bluetooth.ini
│   ├── cisco.ini
│   ├── cpu.ini
│   ├── date.ini
│   ├── eth.ini
│   ├── eth_work.ini
│   ├── i3.ini
│   ├── memory.ini
│   ├── nm-editor.ini
│   ├── powermenu.ini
│   ├── pulseaudio-control.ini
│   ├── pulseaudio.ini
│   ├── rofi.ini
│   ├── vpn.ini
│   └── wlan.ini
└── work-modules.ini

1 directory, 24 files

To break this down there are several configs to see:

1. colors.ini is what you'd expect - a set of defined colors like foreground, underline, etc.
2. config.ini is the general polybar config file where bars are defined. Currently in mine there is a work and home bar defined with the modules sourced in from the explicit config files.
3. fonts.ini is like colors.ini -> you put fonts here. I recommend using a font patched with NerdFont so you get fancy icons! (I use JetBrains Mono)
4. include-modules.ini is where I list out all the config files in modules/ so I can basically source just the include-modules.ini without explicitly sourcing every module's config in every polybar defintion.
5. launch.sh is a simple shell script to launch the polybar! You'll see mine takes multiple monitors into consideration which I manage via environment variables setup in my .zshenv file that is different for my work and home setups.
6. Finally there are home-modules.ini and work-modules.ini which is where, for each of my bars, I define which modules I want!

Config

My config.ini file has 2 bar definitions in it - here's my home one:

include-file = $DOTFILES/polybar/include-modules.ini

[bar/home]
monitor = ${env:MONITOR:}
width = 100%
height = 25
radius = 8.0
fixed-center = true
bottom = false

background = ${colors.background}
foreground = ${colors.foreground}

include-file = $DOTFILES/polybar/fonts.ini
include-file = $DOTFILES/polybar/home-modules.ini

It should be easy to follow - I bring in the include-modules, set a few colors for the bar like background and foreground which are sourced by the colors.ini, and finally bring in my fonts and home modules via their config files!

It's super easy to then change one or two things in the appropriate places rather than combing through one massive config. This also makes it easy for me to seperate my work and home setups.

Modules

There are several builtin modules, like wlan which gives your wifi status right there in polybar.

You can also make custom ones. A big-time custom one for me is an indicator of whether or not I have an active AWS token for working with the aws cli.

This is defined in modules/aws.ini and it looks like this:

[module/aws]
interval = 5.0
type = custom/script
exec = has_aws_token
click-left = $HOME/.local/bin/auto_get_aws_token
click-right = rm -rf ~/.aws/credentials

Every 5 seconds my has_aws_token script is ran. That script looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
source auto_proxy
aws sts get-caller-identity &> /dev/null && echo "%{T5}%{F#00ff00}  %{F-}%{T-}"  ||( echo "%{T5}%{F#ff0000} %{F-}%{T-}" )

See how the script echos out a colored icon to indicate the status of my token -> that icon is displayed in the polybar so I have real-time (5 second latency) status of whether or not I can do things in my AWS environment.

In the module I also configured actions for click-left and click-right which are as straight forward as could be.

My issues with i3

There's a few things to be considerate of if you use i3 such as needing a workaround for a centered bar that is not the full width of the monitor. Polybar can look really nice by not taking up the full width of the bar which you can configure in config.ini with these options:

width = 90%
offset-x = 5%  # set to (100 - width) / 2

However due to an issue with polybar and i3 you need to also set override-redirect = true. BUT then you'll notice that the bar overlaps your i3 windows... ARGH! what do we do?

Quick work around is to set gaps top in your i3 config if you use i3-gaps... if not? well, idk... use gaps... lol

However this introduces another issue - which is then full screen windows will have polybar sitting on top of them...

This isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but for me it's worth it to just have the bar go 100% width.

FIN

There's a tiny intro to polybar and how I organize my config files so things are easy to edit and manage! Feel free to grab mine and try it out!