quick-start.org

Quick start: using xmobar

Xmobar can either be configured using the configuration language, or used as a Haskell library (similar to xmonad) and compiled with your specific configuration. For an example of the latter, you can have a loot at examples/xmobar.hs or, for a more complicated example, peruse the author’s configuration.

There is also an example of a config using the configuration language available here.

Command Line Options

xmobar can be either configured with a configuration file or with command line options. In the second case, the command line options will overwrite the corresponding options set in the configuration file.

Example:

xmobar -B white -a right -F blue -t '%LIPB%' -c '[Run Weather "LIPB" [] 36000]'

This is the list of command line options (the output of xmobar --help):

Usage: xmobar [OPTION...] [FILE]
Options:
  -h, -?        --help                 This help
  -v            --verbose              Emit verbose debugging messages
  -r            --recompile            Force recompilation
  -V            --version              Show version information
  -f font name  --font=font name       Font name
  -N font name  --add-font=font name   Add to the list of additional fonts
  -w class      --wmclass=class        X11 WM_CLASS property
  -n name       --wmname=name          X11 WM_NAME property
  -B bg color   --bgcolor=bg color     The background color. Default black
  -F fg color   --fgcolor=fg color     The foreground color. Default grey
  -i path       --iconroot=path        Root directory for icon pattern paths. Default '.'
  -A alpha      --alpha=alpha          Transparency: 0 is transparent, 255 is opaque. Default: 255
  -o            --top                  Place xmobar at the top of the screen
  -b            --bottom               Place xmobar at the bottom of the screen
  -d            --dock                 Don't override redirect from WM and function as a dock
  -a alignsep   --alignsep=alignsep    Separators for left, center and right text
                                       alignment. Default: '}{'
  -s char       --sepchar=char         Character used to separate commands in
                                       the output template. Default '%'
  -t template   --template=template    Output template
  -c commands   --commands=commands    List of commands to be executed
  -C command    --add-command=command  Add to the list of commands to be executed
  -x screen     --screen=screen        On which X screen number to start
  -p position   --position=position    Specify position of xmobar. Same syntax as in config file
  -T [format]   --text[=format]        Write output to stdout

Mail bug reports and suggestions to <mail@jao.io>

Configuration Options

Global options

Here are all the global configuration options that you can set within the Config block in your configuration.

• font Name of the font to be used. Use the xft: prefix for XFT fonts.
• additionalFonts Haskell-style list of fonts to be used with the fn-template. Use the xft: prefix for XFT fonts. See also textOffsets below. For example:

  additionalFonts = [iconFont, altIconFont]
      

• bgColor Background color.
• fgColor Default font color.
• alpha The transparency. 0 is transparent, 255 is opaque.
• position Top, TopH, TopP, TopW, TopSize, Bottom, BottomH, BottomP, BottomW, BottomSize or Static (with x, y, width and height).

  TopP and BottomP take 2 arguments: left padding and right padding.

  TopW and BottomW take 2 arguments: an alignment parameter (L for left, C for centered, R for Right) and an integer for the percentage width xmobar window will have in respect to the screen width.

  TopSize and BottomSize take 3 arguments: an alignment parameter, an integer for the percentage width, and an integer for the minimum pixel height that the xmobar window will have.

  TopH and BottomH take one argument (Int) which adjusts the bar height.

  For example:

  position = TopH 30
      

  to make a 30 tall bar on the top, or

  position = BottomH 30
      

  to make a 30 tall bar on the bottom of the screen.

  position = BottomW C 75
      

  to place xmobar at the bottom, centered with the 75% of the screen width. Or

  position = BottomP 120 0
      

  to place xmobar at the bottom, with 120 pixel indent of the left. Or

  position = Static { xpos = 0 , ypos = 0, width = 1024, height = 15 }
      

  or

  position = Top
      

• textOffset The vertical offset, in pixels, for the text baseline. If negative or not given, xmobar will try to center text vertically.
• textOffsets A list of vertical offsets, in pixels, for the text baseline, to be used with the each of the fonts in additionalFonts (if any). If negative or not given, xmobar will try to center text vertically for that font.
• iconOffset The vertical offset, in pixels, for icons bottom line. If negative or not given, xmobar will try to center icons vertically.
• lowerOnStart When True the window is sent the bottom of the window stack initially.
• hideOnStart When set to True the window is initially not mapped, i.e. hidden. It then can be toggled manually (for example using the dbus interface) or automatically (by a plugin) to make it reappear.
• allDesktops When set to True (the default), xmobar will tell the window manager explicitly to be shown in all desktops, by setting _NET_WM_DESKTOP to 0xffffffff.
• overrideRedirect If you’re running xmobar in a tiling window manager, you might need to set this option to False so that it behaves as a docked application. Defaults to True.
• pickBroadest When multiple displays are available, xmobar will choose by default the first one to place itself. With this flag set to True (the default is False) it will choose the broadest one instead.
• persistent When True the window status is fixed i.e. hiding or revealing is not possible. This option can be toggled at runtime. Defaults to False.
• border TopB, TopBM, BottomB, BottomBM, FullB, FullBM or NoBorder (default).

  TopB, BottomB, FullB take no arguments, and request drawing a border at the top, bottom or around xmobar’s window, respectively.

  TopBM, BottomBM, FullBM take an integer argument, which is the margin, in pixels, between the border of the window and the drawn border.

• borderColor Border color.
• borderWidth Border width in pixels.
• iconRoot Root folder where icons are stored. For <icon=path/> if path start with /, ./ or ../ it is interpreted as it is. Otherwise it will have

  iconRoot ++ "/"
      

  prepended to it. Default is ..

• commands For setting the options of the programs to run (optional).
• sepChar The character to be used for indicating commands in the output template (default ‘%’).
• alignSep a 2 character string for aligning text in the output template. The text before the first character will be align to left, the text in between the 2 characters will be centered, and the text after the second character will be align to the right.
• template The output template.
• wmClass The value for the window’s X11 WM_CLASS property. Defaults to “xmobar”.
• wmName The value for the window’s X11 WM_NAME property. Defaults to “xmobar”.
• textOutput When True, instead of running as an X11 application, write output to stdout, with optional color escape sequences. In this mode, icon and action specifications are ignored. Default is False.
• textOutputFormat Plain, Ansi or Pango, to emit, when in text mode, escape color sequences using ANSI controls (for terminals) or pango markup. Default is Plain.

The output template

The output template is how xmobar will end up printing all of your configured commands. It must contain at least one command. Xmobar will parse the template and search for the command to be executed in the commands configuration option. First an alias will be searched (some plugins, such as Weather or Network, have default aliases, see the plugin documentation). After that, the command name will be tried. If a command is found, the arguments specified in the commands list will be used.

If no command is found in the commands list, xmobar will ask the operating system to execute a program with the name found in the template. If the execution is not successful an error will be reported.

Template syntax

The syntax for the output template is as follows:

• %command% will execute command and print the output. The output may contain markups to change the characters’ color.
• <fc=#FF0000>string</fc> will print string with #FF0000 color (red). <fc=#FF0000,#000000>string</fc> will print string in red with a black background (#000000). Background absolute offsets can be specified for XFT fonts. <fc=#FF0000,#000000:0>string</fc> will have a background matching the bar’s height.
• <fn=1>string</fn> will print string with the first font from additionalFonts. The index 0 corresponds to the standard font.
• <hspace=X/> will insert a blank horizontal space of X pixels. For example, to add a blank horizontal space of 123 pixels, <hspace=123/> may be used.
  • <box>string</box> will print string surrounded by a box in the foreground color. The box tag accepts several optional arguments to tailor its looks: see next section.
• <icon=/path/to/icon.xbm/> will insert the given bitmap. XPM image format is also supported when compiled with the with_xpm flag.
• <action=`command` button=12345> will execute given command when clicked with specified buttons. If not specified, button is equal to 1 (left mouse button). Using old syntax (without backticks surrounding command) will result in button attribute being ignored.
• <raw=len:str/> allows the encapsulation of arbitrary text str (which must be len Char=s long, where =len is encoded as a decimal sequence). Careful use of this and UnsafeStdinReader, for example, permits window managers to feed xmobar strings with <action> tags mixed with un-trusted content (e.g. window titles). For example, if xmobar is invoked as

  xmobar -c "[Run UnsafeStdinReader]" -t "%UnsafeStdinReader%"
      

  and receives on standard input the line

  <action=`echo test` button=1><raw=41:<action=`echo mooo` button=1>foo</action>/></action>`
      

  then it will display the text <action=`echo mooo` button=1>foo</action>, which, when clicked, will cause test to be echoed.

  See the subsections below for more information on <box/>, <icon/> and <action/>.

Boxes around text

• <box>string</box> will print string surrounded by a box in the foreground color. The box tag accepts several optional arguments to tailor its looks:
  • type: Top, Bottom, VBoth (a single line above or below string, or both), Left, Right, HBoth (single vertical lines), Full (a rectangle, the default).
  • color: the color of the box lines.
  • width: the width of the box lines.
  • offset: an alignment char (L, C or R) followed by the amount of pixels to offset the box lines; the alignment denotes the position of the resulting line, with L/R meaning top/bottom for the vertical lines, and left/right for horizontal ones.
  • mt, mb, ml, mr specify margins to be added at the top, bottom, left and right lines.

  For example, a box underlining its text with a red line of width 2:

  <box type=Bottom width=2 color=red>string</box>
      

  and if you wanted an underline and an overline with a margin of 2 pixels either side:

  <box type=VBoth mt=2 mb=2>string</box>
      

  When xmobar is run in text mode with output format swaybar, box types, colors and widths are valid too, but margins and offsets are ignored.

Bitmap Icons

It’s possible to insert in the global templates icon directives of the form:

prepended to it. Default is ..

<icon=/path/to/bitmap.xbm/>

which will produce the expected result. Accepted image formats are XBM and XPM (when with_xpm flag is enabled). If path does not start with /, ./, ../ it will have

iconRoot ++ "/"

prepended to it.

Icons are ignored when xmobar is run in text output mode.

Action Directives

It’s also possible to use action directives of the form:

<action=`command` button=12345>

which will be executed when clicked on with specified mouse buttons. This tag can be nested, allowing different commands to be run depending on button clicked.

Actions work also when xmobar is run in text mode and used as the status command of swaybar.

The commands configuration option

The commands configuration option is a list of commands information and arguments to be used by xmobar when parsing the output template. Each member of the list consists in a command prefixed by the Run keyword. Each command has arguments to control the way xmobar is going to execute it.

The option consists in a list of commands separated by a comma and enclosed by square parenthesis.

Example:

[Run Memory ["-t","Mem: <usedratio>%"] 10, Run Swap [] 10]

to run the Memory monitor plugin with the specified template, and the swap monitor plugin, with default options, every second. And here’s an example of a template for the commands above using an icon:

template = "<icon=/home/jao/.xmobar/mem.xbm/><memory> <swap>"

This example will run “xclock” command when date is clicked:

template = "<action=`xclock`>%date%</action>"

The only internal available command is Com (see below Executing External Commands). All other commands are provided by plugins. xmobar comes with some plugins, providing a set of system monitors, a standard input reader, an Unix named pipe reader, a configurable date plugin, and much more: we list all available plugins below.

Other commands can be created as plugins with the Plugin infrastructure. See below.

Runtime behaviour

Running xmobar with i3status

xmobar can be used to display information generated by i3status, a small program that gathers system information and outputs it in formats suitable for being displayed by the dzen2 status bar, wmii’s status bar or xmobar’s StdinReader. See i3status manual for further details.

Dynamically sizing xmobar

See this idea by Jonas Camillus Jeppensen for a way of adapting dynamically xmobar’s size and run it alongside a system tray widget such as trayer or stalonetray (although the idea is not limited to trays, really). For your convenience, there is a version of Jonas’ script in examples/padding-icon.sh.

Signal Handling

xmobar reacts to SIGUSR1 and SIGUSR2:

• After receiving SIGUSR1 xmobar moves its position to the next screen.
• After receiving SIGUSR2 xmobar repositions itself on the current screen.

The DBus Interface

When compiled with the optional with_dbus flag, xmobar can be controlled over dbus. All signals defined in src/Signal.hs as data SignalType can now be sent over dbus to xmobar.

Due to current limitations of the implementation only one process of xmobar can acquire the dbus. This is handled on a first-come-first-served basis, meaning that the first process will get the dbus interface. Other processes will run without further problems, yet have no dbus interface.

• Bus Name: org.Xmobar.Control
• Object Path: /org/Xmobar/Control
• Member Name: Any of SignalType, e.g. string:Reveal
• Interface Name: org.Xmobar.Control

An example using the dbus-send command line utility:

dbus-send \
    --session \
    --dest=org.Xmobar.Control \
    --type=method_call \
    --print-reply \
    '/org/Xmobar/Control' \
    org.Xmobar.Control.SendSignal \
    "string:SetAlpha 192"

It is also possible to send multiple signals at once:

# send to another screen, reveal and toggle the persistent flag
dbus-send [..] \
    "string:ChangeScreen 0" "string:Reveal 0" "string:TogglePersistent"

The Toggle, Reveal, and Hide signals take an additional integer argument that denotes an initial delay, in tenths of a second, before the command takes effect, while SetAlpha takes a new alpha value (also an integer, between 0 and 255) as argument.

See Interfacing with window managers for an example of how to use the DBus interface from xmonad.