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 # π π» π‘ π β‘ π \| echo $uptime_formatted β $linux_version π§ $battery_status π $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 $HOME status_command while ~/.config/sway/status.sh; do sleep 1; done colors { # Text color of status bar statusline #ffffff # Background of status bar background #323232 } font pango:DejaVu Sans Mono 10 } That's how the bar looks using this configuration:
The above settings works also in i3 with an identical result.
You need to have an appropriate font installed to render the emoji characters, for example:
pacman -S noto-fonts-emoji or
apt install fonts-noto-color-emoji sudo chmod 744 ~/.config/sway/status.sh battery_status=$(upower -i $(upower -e | grep 'BAT') | grep -E "percentage" | awk '{print $2}') 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" π": \ $4" π"}' |\ tr -d []) # Additional emojis and characters for the status bar: # Electricity: β‘ β― β π # Audio: π π π§ πΆ π΅ π€ # Separators: \| β β β # Misc: π§ π π» π‘ β π β β β β
β echo $audio_volume $battery_info π $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:
cut, awk etc) - so cleaner syntax :-) psutils is not part of the standard library, it is very a common one though for cross-platform stuff :-) 
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.
