POLYBAR

PRIMARY CATEGORY → SETUP

polybar → Highly Customizable Status Bars

Each bar has its own modules and It is executed as a daemon

$ pgrep --list-full --exact polybar
1631 polybar log -c /home/al3xbb/.config/polybar/current.ini
1632 polybar ethernet_bar -c /home/al3xbb/.config/polybar/current.ini
1633 polybar vpn_bar -c /home/al3xbb/.config/polybar/current.ini

INFO

In above command’s output, each process corresponds to a specific bar with its name and its configuration file where the bar and its module/s are declared

polybar log -c /home/al3xbb/.config/polybar/current.ini
         |                                   |
         +---> Bar's Name                    +---> Config File

• -c FILE | --config=FILE → Path to the configuration file

A module can execute any action such as a command, scripts…

Each bar with its configuration file as an argument is launched by the below script

polybar is executed by bspwm from the bspwmrc script through the polybar’s launcher script → ~/.config/polybar/launch.sh

# ~/.config/bspwm/bspwmrc - Polybar Launch
checkProcess polybar || { launchProcess "$_pbl" ; unset -v -- _pbl ; }

INFO

Note that checkProcess and launchProcess are shell functions declared in the ~/.config/bspwm/src/bspwmrc.sh source file

The $_pbl parameter is also declared in that file being the Polybar Launcher Path

Above implementation would be something similar to the usual approach through pgrep --exact process_name || binary|script_path &

#!/usr/bin/env sh
$ pgrep --exact polybar > /dev/null 2>&1 || ~/.config/polybar/launch.sh &

Configuration File → Any file which a .ini extension

Launcher File → ~/.config/polybar/launch.sh

More information here

Polybar Site

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Installation

CAUTION

First, see the bspwm, sxhkd and kitty installations before proceeding with this one related to polybar

There are some dependencies that are needed in the following installation steps

In addition, the above setup components’ installation facilitates the ZSH Configuration

$ apt install -y -- polybar

That’s it

$ command -V polybar
polybar is /usr/bin/polybar

IMPORTANT

Installation can be done either through the OS package manager or via the git clone command

Note that the default OS repositories listed in /etc/apt/sources.list file and in /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory may have older versions unlike the polybar’s official Github repository

As It is always is desirable to have the latest versions of any package or binary installed, I’d recommend installing them via their Github Repositories

Although, in this case the package’s version installed from the apt Package Manager differs only slightly from the github one

As a base for the configuration file’s structure, clone the following Github Repository

$ git clone https://github.com/VaughnValle/blue-sky ~/Downloads/blue-sky

Then, recursively copy the polybar’s content into ~/.config/polybar →

$ cd !$
$ bash -c "shopt -sq dotglob && cp -rv -- ./polybar/* ~/.config/polybar"

INFO

In the above command, bash -c is used to run the inner commands inside a bash

This is done in order to to be able to use the shopt shell builtin, and then enable the dotglob shell extension to expand also the hidden files through globbing

Note that prior action can also be performed in this way

Once the above is done, insert the following line in the bspwmrc file related to the Polybar’s Launch →

As already stated, these functions check polybar’s status and launch it

checkProcess polybar || { launchProcess "$_pbl" ; unset -v -- _pbl ; }

Lastly, copy the polybar’s fonts (i.e. the .ttf Files) into the system TrueType Fonts directory and reset the _ system’s fonts cache_ →

$ cp ~/.config/polybar/fonts/* /usr/share/fonts/truetype/
$ fs-cache -v # Reset the System Fonts Cache

Configuration File

Launcher File