I'd like to have a simple, calm status bar for Sway which I use with Arch Linux.
The configurations I found so far use a separate program like waybar or i3status. While they look great, I'd like to keep it simple and use status_command mentioned in man sway-bar directly.
Preferably, this status bar would work equally well with i3 which should be possible since Sway aims to have its configuration be compatible with i3.
I have this script at ~/.config/sway/status.sh:
# The Sway configuration file in ~/.config/sway/config calls this script.
# You should see changes to the status bar after saving this script.
# If not, do "killall swaybar" and $mod+Shift+c to reload the configuration.
# Produces "21 days", for example
uptime_formatted=$(uptime | cut -d ',' -f1 | cut -d ' ' -f4,5)
# The abbreviated weekday (e.g., "Sat"), followed by the ISO-formatted date
# like 2018-10-06 and the time (e.g., 14:01)
date_formatted=$(date "+%a %F %H:%M")
# Get the Linux version but remove the "-1-ARCH" part
linux_version=$(uname -r | cut -d '-' -f1)
# Returns the battery status: "Full", "Discharging", or "Charging".
battery_status=$(cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/status)
# Emojis and characters for the status bar
# ⚡ \|
echo $uptime_formatted ↑ $linux_version $battery_status $date_formatted
The part in ~/.config/sway/config that defines the status bar is this:
bar {
position top
# Keep in mind that the current directory of this config file is $HOME
status_command while ~/.config/sway/status.sh; do sleep 1; done
colors {
# Text color of status bar
statusline #ffffff
# Background of status bar
background #323232
}
font pango:DejaVu Sans Mono 10
}
That's how the bar looks using this configuration:
The above settings works also in i3 with an identical result.
You need to have an appropriate font installed to render the emoji characters, for example:
pacman -S noto-fonts-emoji
or
apt install fonts-noto-color-emoji
Here's my current status bar:
When audio is muted:
Content of status.sh which ~/.config/sway/config calls:
# The Sway configuration file in ~/.config/sway/config calls this script.
# You should see changes to the status bar after saving this script.
# If not, do "killall swaybar" and $mod+Shift+c to reload the configuration.
# The abbreviated weekday (e.g., "Sat"), followed by the ISO-formatted date
# like 2018-10-06 and the time (e.g., 14:01). Check `man date` on how to format
# time and date.
date_formatted=$(date "+%a %F %H:%M")
# "upower --enumerate | grep 'BAT'" gets the battery name (e.g.,
# "/org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0") from all power devices.
# "upower --show-info" prints battery information from which we get
# the state (such as "charging" or "fully-charged") and the battery's
# charge percentage. With awk, we cut away the column containing
# identifiers. i3 and sway convert the newline between battery state and
# the charge percentage automatically to a space, producing a result like
# "charging 59%" or "fully-charged 100%".
battery_info=$(upower --show-info $(upower --enumerate |\
grep 'BAT') |\
egrep "state|percentage" |\
awk '{print $2}')
# "amixer -M" gets the mapped volume for evaluating the percentage which
# is more natural to the human ear according to "man amixer".
# Column number 4 contains the current volume percentage in brackets, e.g.,
# "[36%]". Column number 6 is "[off]" or "[on]" depending on whether sound
# is muted or not.
# "tr -d []" removes brackets around the volume.
# Adapted from https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=89648
audio_volume=$(amixer -M get Master |\
awk '/Mono.+/ {print $6=="[off]" ?\
$4" ": \
$4" "}' |\
tr -d [])
# Additional emojis and characters for the status bar:
# Electricity: ⚡ ↯ ⭍
# Audio:
# Separators: \| ❘ ❙ ❚
# Misc: ⭐ ↑ ↓ ✉ ✅ ❎
echo $audio_volume $battery_info $date_formatted
Here's the status bar part of ~/.config/sway/config:
bar {
position top
# Keep in mind that the current directory of this config file is $HOME
status_command while ~/.config/sway/status.sh; do sleep 1; done
# https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_colors
colors {
# Text color of status bar
statusline #f8b500
# Background color of status bar
background #5e227f
}
}
status.sh works also with i3 when called from /.config/i3/config using the same bar block shown above.
Here's a link to my current Sway configuration containing status.sh.
I love bash but I am using a Python script for this. Looks like Python's standard library has lot of utilities for these kind of things.
from datetime import datetime
from psutil import disk_usage, sensors_battery
from psutil._common import bytes2human
from socket import gethostname, gethostbyname
from subprocess import check_output
from sys import stdout
from time import sleep
def write(data):
stdout.write('%s\n' % data)
stdout.flush()
def refresh():
disk = bytes2human(disk_usage('/').free)
ip = gethostbyname(gethostname())
try:
ssid = check_output("iwgetid -r", shell=True).strip().decode("utf-8")
ssid = "(%s)" % ssid
except Exception:
ssid = "None"
battery = int(sensors_battery().percent)
status = "Charging" if sensors_battery().power_plugged else "Discharging"
date = datetime.now().strftime('%h %d %A %H:%M')
format = "Space: %s | Internet: %s %s | Battery: %s%% %s | Date: %s"
write(format % (disk, ip, ssid, battery, status, date))
while True:
refresh()
sleep(1)
Here's a screenshot of the bar:
I wrote a lightweight yet feature-rich status bar swaystatus for i3 and sway.
It is written completely in C/C++ to make it as lightweight as possible and specifically, to avoid creating new processes every second as in the Bash script.
It uses libraries like libupower-glib, libasound and libnm to retrieve battery, volume and network information as opposed to using upower, amixer or nmcli.
For backlight, load, and meminfo, it reads directly from /sys/class/backlight, /proc/loadavg and /proc/meminfo.
On my x86-64 computer, it compiles to a single binary that is only 49K large using clang-11.
