Polybar - ArchWiki

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polybar is a fast and easy-to-use tool for creating status bars. It aims to be easily customizable, utilising many modules which enable a wide range of (editable) functionality, such as displaying workspaces, the date, or system volume. Polybar is especially useful for window managers that have a limited or non-existent status bar, such as awesome or i3. Polybar can also be used with desktop environments like Plasma.

## Installation

Install the polybar package. The development version is polybar-gitAUR.

## Configuration

Copy the configuration example from `/etc/polybar/config.ini` to `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/polybar/config`. By default, polybar will load the config file from `~/.config/polybar/config.ini`, `/etc/xdg/polybar/config.ini`, or `/etc/polybar/config.ini` depending on which it finds first.

### Running Polybar

See `polybar --help` for a list of options to run it manually. However, you will probably want to run Polybar with your window manager's bootstrap routine. See #Running with a window manager.

### Sample configuration

A very basic polybar configuration may look like this:

    [bar/mybar]
    modules-right = date

    [module/date]
    type = internal/date
    date = %Y-%m-%d%

It defines a bar named `mybar` with a module called `date`.

Polybar will also install the default configuration with many preconfigured modules in `/etc/polybar/config.ini`.

### Running with a window manager

Create an executable file containing the startup logic, for example `$HOME/.config/polybar/launch.sh`:

    #!/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.ini
    polybar mybar 2>&1 | tee -a /tmp/polybar.log & disown

    echo "Polybar launched..."

This script will mean that restarting your window manager will also restart Polybar.

To execute this script by your window manager on startup, see Autostarting#On window manager startup.

## See also

- Polybar Github Wiki

Category:

- Eye candy