Polybar Documentation¶

Note

This is still very much a work-in-progress. Most information is still to be found on our GitHub Wiki. We will migrate the wiki content step-by-step.

Welcome to the official polybar documentation.

Actions¶

New in version 3.5.0.

Table of Contents

Action String Format
Triggering Actions
Available Actions
Deprecated Action Names
- Migration
  - Menu Module Example

"Actions" are used to trigger certain behavior in modules. For example, when you click on your volume module (pulseaudio or alsa), polybar internally sends an action to that module that tells it to mute/unmute the audio.

These actions are not only used internally, but users can also send these actions to polybar through Inter Process Communication (IPC) to trigger certain behavior in polybar modules.

Action String Format ¶

An action string follows the following format:

#NAME.ACTION[.DATA]

Where NAME is the name of the target module (not the type!) and ACTION is the name of the action in that module. DATA is optional data attached to an action (for example to say which menu level should be opened).

For example the date module supports the toggle action to toggle between the regular and the alternative time and date format. If you have the following date module:

[module/mydate]
type = internal/date
...

The action string for toggling between the date formats would look like this:

#mydate.toggle

Note that we use the name of the module (mydate) and not the type.

As an example for an action string with additional data, take the menu module:

[module/powermenu]
type = custom/menu
menu-0-0 = Poweroff
menu-0-0-exec = poweroff
menu-0-1 = Suspend
menu-0-1-exec = systemctl suspend

The action name to open a certain menu level is open, so to open level 0 (menu-0), the action string additionally has the level attached to it:

#powermenu.open.0

Triggering Actions ¶

Most modules already use action strings to trigger actions when you click on or scroll over a module. But in some cases you may want or need to manually send action strings to polybar to trigger a certain behavior.

Everywhere where you can specify a command to run on click or scroll, you can also specify an action string. For example, in the bar section, you can specify a command that is triggered when you click anywhere on the bar (where there isn't another click action):

[bar/mybar]
...
click-left = #mydate.toggle
...

This will then trigger the toggle action on the mydate module when you click anywhere on the bar.

Similarly, we can use action strings in %{A} formatting tags just as we would regular commands:

%{A1:firefox:}%{A3:#mydate.toggle:}Opens firefox on left-click and toggles the
date on right-click %{A}%{A}

Finally, polybar's Inter Process Communication (IPC) can also be used to trigger actions:

polybar-msg action "#mydate.toggle"

Note

The quotes around the action string are necessary, otherwise your shell may interpret the # as the beginning of the comment and ignore the rest of the line.

Available Actions ¶

The following modules have actions available. Most of them are already used by the module by default for click and scroll events.

internal/date ¶

`toggle`:	Toggles the date/time format between `date`/`time` and `date-alt`/`time-alt`

internal/alsa ¶

`inc`, `dec`:	Increases/Decreases the volume by `interval` percentage points, where `interval` is the config setting in the module. Volume changed like this will never go above 100%.
`toggle`:	Toggles between muted and unmuted.

internal/pulseaudio ¶

`inc`, `dec`:	Increases/Decreases the volume by `interval` percentage points, where `interval` is the config setting in the module. Volume changed like this will never go above ~153% (if `use-ui-max` is set to `true`) or 100% (if not).
`toggle`:	Toggles between muted and unmuted.

internal/xbacklight ¶

`inc`, `dec`:	Increases/Decreases screen brightness 5 percentage points.

internal/backlight ¶

`inc`, `dec`:	Increases/Decreases screen brightness 5 percentage points.

internal/xkeyboard ¶

`switch`:	Cycles through configured keyboard layouts.

internal/mpd ¶

`play`:	Starts playing the current song.
`pause`:	Pauses the current song.
`stop`:	Stops playing.
`prev`:	Starts playing the previous song.
`next`:	Starts playing the next song.
`repeat`:	Toggles repeat mode.
`single`:	Toggles single mode.
`random`:	Toggles random mode.
`consume`:	Toggles consume mode.
`seek`:	(Has Data) Seeks inside the current song. The data must be of the form `[+-]N`, where `N` is a number between 0 and 100. If either `+` or `-` is used, it will seek forward or backward from the current position by `N%` (relative to the length of the song). Otherwise it will seek to `N%` of the current song.

internal/xworkspaces ¶

focus:

(Has Data) Switches to the given workspace.

The data is the index of the workspace that should be selected.

next:

Switches to the next workspace. The behavior of this action is affected by the pin-workspaces setting.

prev:

Switches to the previous workspace. The behavior of this action is affected by the pin-workspaces setting.

internal/bspwm ¶

focus:

(Has Data) Switches to the given workspace.

The data has the form N+M, where N is the index of the monitor and M the index of the workspace on that monitor. Both indices are 0-based and correspond to the position the monitor and workspace appear in the output of bspc subscribe report.

next:

Switches to the next workspace. The behavior of this action is affected by the pin-workspaces setting.

prev:

Switches to the previous workspace. The behavior of this action is affected by the pin-workspaces setting.

internal/i3 ¶

focus:

(Has Data) Switches to the given workspace.

The data is the name of the workspace defined in the i3 config.

next:

Switches to the next workspace. The behavior of this action is affected by the pin-workspaces setting.

prev:

Switches to the previous workspace. The behavior of this action is affected by the pin-workspaces setting.

custom/menu ¶

open:

(Has Data) Opens the given menu level

The data is a single number specifying which menu level should be opened.

close:

Closes the menu

exec:

(Has Data) Executes the command at the given menu element.

The data has the form N-M and the action will execute the command in menu-N-M-exec.

Deprecated Action Names ¶

Deprecated since version 3.5.0.

In earlier versions (< 3.5.0) action strings only included information about the module type. This meant in bars that contained multiple different modules of the same type, actions for these modules were sometimes processed by the wrong module with the same type.

Since version 3.5.0, this no longer happens. However, this also means we had to change what actions are recognized by polybar modules.

If you explicitly use any polybar action names in your config or any of your scripts, you are advised to change them, as they may stop working at some point in the future. For now polybar still supports the old action names, will convert them to the appropriate new action name, and will print a warning to help you find old action names in your config.

If you use the menu module, you most likely use old action names to open and close the menu (for example menu-open-1 or menu-close). The i3wm-wsnext, i3wm-wsprev, bspwm-desknext, and bspwm-deskprev actions, to switch workspaces in i3 and bspwm, may also appear in your config.

Migration ¶

Updating your config to use the new action names is quite straightforward.

For each action name, consult the table below to find the new action name. Afterwards build the complete action string as described in Action String Format.

Please see below for an example of migrating a typical menu module.

Module Type	Deprecated Action Name	New Action Name
`internal/date`	`datetoggle`	`toggle`
`internal/alsa`	`volup`	`inc`
	`voldown`	`dec`
	`volmute`	`toggle`
`internal/pulseaudio`	`pa_volup`	`inc`
	`pa_voldown`	`dec`
	`pa_volmute`	`toggle`
`internal/xbacklight`	`xbacklight+`	`inc`
`internal/xbacklight`	`xbacklight-`	`dec`
`internal/backlight`	`backlight+`	`inc`
`internal/backlight`	`backlight-`	`dec`
`internal/xkeyboard`	`xkeyboard/switch`	`switch`
`internal/mpd`	`mpdplay`	`play`
	`mpdpause`	`pause`
	`mpdstop`	`stop`
	`mpdprev`	`prev`
	`mpdnext`	`next`
	`mpdrepeat`	`repeat`
	`mpdsingle`	`single`
	`mpdrandom`	`random`
	`mpdconsume`	`consume`
	`mpdseekN`	`seek.N`
`internal/xworkspaces`	`xworkspaces-focus=N`	`focus.N`
	`xworkspaces-next`	`next`
	`xworkspaces-prev`	`prev`
`internal/bspwm`	`bspwm-deskfocusN`	`focus.N`
	`bspwm-desknext`	`next`
	`bspwm-deskprev`	`prev`
`internal/i3`	`i3wm-wsfocus-N`	`focus.N`
	`i3-wsnext`	`next`
	`i3-wsprev`	`prev`
`custom/menu`	`menu-open-N`	`open.N`
`custom/menu`	`menu-close`	`close`

Note

Some deprecated action names are suffixed with N, this means that that action has some additional data (represented by that N), in the new action names this data will appear in exactly the same way, after a period.

Menu Module Example ¶

The menu module is the only module where we have to explicitly use actions for it to work. Because of this, almost everyone will need to update their menu module to use the new action format.

Below you can see an example of a menu module:

[module/apps]
type = custom/menu

menu-0-0 = Browsers
menu-0-0-exec = menu-open-1
menu-0-1 = Multimedia
menu-0-1-exec = menu-open-2

menu-1-0 = Firefox
menu-1-0-exec = firefox &
menu-1-1 = Chromium
menu-1-1-exec = chromium &

menu-2-0 = Gimp
menu-2-0-exec = gimp &
menu-2-1 = Scrot
menu-2-1-exec = scrot &

This module uses two actions: menu-open-1 and menu-open-2. These are actions with data, the data specifies which level of the menu should be opened.

Looking at the table, we see that the new action name for menu-open-N is open.N, where .N is the data attached to the action. Putting this together with the name of the module gives us #apps.open.1 and #apps.open.2 as action strings. Since your menu module likely has a different name, your action strings will likely not use apps, but the name of your module.

[module/apps]
type = custom/menu

menu-0-0 = Browsers
menu-0-0-exec = #apps.open.1
menu-0-1 = Multimedia
menu-0-1-exec = #apps.open.2

menu-1-0 = Firefox
menu-1-0-exec = firefox &
menu-1-1 = Chromium
menu-1-1-exec = chromium &

menu-2-0 = Gimp
menu-2-0-exec = gimp &
menu-2-1 = Scrot
menu-2-1-exec = scrot &

polybar(1)¶

SYNOPSIS¶

polybar [OPTIONS]... BAR

DESCRIPTION¶

Polybar aims to help users build beautiful and highly customizable status bars for their desktop environment, without the need of having a black belt in shell scripting.

OPTIONS¶

-h, --help¶: Display help text and exit

-v, --version¶: Display build details and exit

-l, --log=LEVEL¶: Set the logging verbosity (default: notice)

LEVEL is one of: error, warning, notice, info, trace

-q, --quiet¶: Be quiet (will override -l)

-c, --config=FILE¶: Specify the path to the configuration file. By default, the configuration file is loaded from:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/polybar/config

$HOME/.config/polybar/config

-r, --reload¶: Reload the application when the config file has been modified

-d, --dump=PARAM¶: Print the value of the specified parameter PARAM in bar section and exit

-m, --list-monitors¶

Print list of available monitors and exit

If some monitors are cloned, this will exclude all but one of them

-M, --list-all-monitors¶

Print list of available monitors and exit

This will also include all cloned monitors.

-w, --print-wmname¶: Print the generated WM_NAME and exit

-s, --stdout¶: Output the data to stdout instead of drawing it to the X window

-p, --png=FILE¶: Save png snapshot to FILE after running for 3 seconds

AUTHOR¶

Michael Carlberg <c@rlberg.se>

Contributors can be listed on GitHub.

REPORTING BUGS¶

Report issues on GitHub <https://github.com/polybar/polybar>

polybar(5)¶

Description¶

The polybar configuration file defines the behavior and look of polybar. It uses a variant of the INI file format. The exact syntax is described below but first a small snippet to get familiar with the syntax:

[section_name]
; A comment
# Another comment

background = #ff992a
width = 90%
monitor = HDMI-0

screenchange-reload = false

; Use double quotes if you want to keep the surrounding space.
text = " Some text "

When started polybar will search for the config file in one of several places in the following order:

If the -c or --config command line argument is specified, it will use the path given there.
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/polybar/config
$HOME/.config/polybar/config

Syntax¶

The entire config is line-based so everything is constrained to a single line. This means there are no multiline values or other multiline constructs (except for sections). Each line has one of four types:

Empty
Comment
Section Header
Key

Spaces at the beginning and end of each line will be ignored.

Note

In this context "spaces" include the regular space character as well as the tab character and any other character for which isspace(3) returns true (e.g. \r).

Any line that doesn't fit into one of these four types is a syntax error.

Note

It is recommended that section header names and key names only use alphanumeric characters as well as dashes (-), underscores (_) and forward slashes (/).

In practice all characters are allowed except for spaces and any of these: "'=;#[](){}:.$\%

Section Headers¶

Sections are used to group config options together. For example each module is defined in its own section.

A section is defined by placing the name of the section in square brackets ([ and ]). For example:

[module/wm]

This declares a section with the name module/wm and all keys defined after this line will belong to that section until a new section is declared.

Warning

The first non-empty and non-comment line in the main config file must be a section header. It cannot be a key because that key would not belong to any section.

Note

The following section names are reserved and cannot be used inside the config: self, root, and BAR.

Keys¶

Keys are defined by assigning a value to a name like this:

name = value

This assigns value to the key name in whatever section this line is in. Key names need to be unique per section. If the value is enclosed by double-quotes ("), the quotes will be ignored. So the following still assigns value to name:

name = "value"

Spaces around the equal sign are ignored, the following are all equivalent:

name=value
name = value
name =      value

Because spaces at the beginning and end of the line are also ignored, if you want your value to begin and/or end with a space, the value needs to be enclosed in double-quotes:

name = " value "

Here name has a leading and trailing whitespace.

Empty Lines & Comments¶

Empty lines and comment lines are ignored when reading the config file, they do not affect polybar's behavior. Comment lines start with either the ; or the # character.

Note

Inline comments are not supported. For example the following line does not end with a comment, they value of name is actually set to value ; comment:

name = value ; comment

Packaging Polybar¶

Do you want to package polybar for a distro? Great! Read this page to get started.

First Steps¶

Before you get started, have a look at the Packaging Label on our GitHub repo and Repology to see if polybar is already packaged for that distro or if there are efforts to do so.

Even if a package already exists, it might still make sense for you to package polybar in some cases. Some of these cases are:

The existing package is out-of-date and the packager is no longer able/willing to continue maintaining the package (or they are simply not reachable anymore).
The existing package exist in some non-official repository and you are able to introduce the package into the official package repository for the distro/package manager. For example if there is a PPA providing polybar for Ubuntu and you can add polybar to the official Ubuntu repositories, please do :)

The list above is not exhaustive, if you are unsure, feel free to ask in a new GitHub issue or on Gitter. Please also ask if you run into any polybar related issues while packaging.

Packaging¶

If you haven't already, carefully read the Compiling wiki page to make sure you fully understand all the dependencies involved and how to build polybar manually.

We can't really tell you how to create a package for your distro, you need to figure that out yourself. But we can give you some guidance on building polybar for a package

Gathering the Source Code¶

Unless you are creating a package that tracks the master branch, don't clone the git repository. We provide a tarball with all the required source code on our Release Page, use that in your build.

Configuring and Compiling¶

Note

Do not use the build.sh script for building polybar for your package. The usage and flags of the script may change without notice and we don't consider that a breaking change.

You can mostly follow the instructions on the wiki for how to compile polybar, but there are some additional cmake arguments you might want to use:

-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release: As of writing this is already the default, but use it just to be on the safe side.
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr: Without this all the polybar files will be installed under /usr/local. However, for packages it is often recommended they directly install to /usr. So this flag will install polybar to /usr/bin/polybar instead of /usr/local/bin/polybar. The packaging guidelines for your distro may disagree with this, in that case be sure to follow your distro's guidelines.

Instead of sudo make install, you will most likely want to use DESTDIR=<dir> make install. That way the files will be installed into <dir> instead of your filesystem root.

Finishing Up¶

Finally, subscribe to our GitHub thread for package maintainers to get notified about new releases and changes to how polybar is built. If you want to, you can also open a PR to add your package to the Getting Started section of our README.

Thank you very much for maintaining a polybar package! 🎉

Release Workflow¶

We try to follow Semantic Versioning in this project. Patch releases (e.g. 3.3.X) contain only bug fixes. Minor releases (e.g. 3.X.0) can have backwards-compatible features. And major releases ( X.0.0) can introduce incompatible changes.

Note

This document replaces the "Release Guidelines" on the wiki that we used between 3.2.0 and 3.4.3. Starting with 3.5.0, we will follow the workflow described here to publish releases.

Polybar uses the OneFlow branching model for publishing new releases and introducing hotfixes.

The way we accept code from contributors does not change: Contributors fork polybar, commit their changes to a new branch and open a PR to get that branch merged. After reviewing and approving the changes, a maintainer "merges" the PR. "Merging" is done in the GitHub UI by either rebasing or squashing the changes. Regular merging is disabled because we do not want merge a merge commit for every PR.

This document is mainly concerned with how to properly release a new version of polybar. For that reason this might not be of interest to you, if you are not a maintainer, but feel free to read on anyway.

Drafting a new Release¶

There a two processes for how to draft a new release. The process for major and minor versions is the same as they both are "regular" releases. Patch releases are triggered by bugfixes that cannot wait until the next regular release and have a slightly different workflow.

Regular Releases (Major, Minor)¶

Regular releases are created once we find that master is in a stable state and that there are enough new features to justify a new release. A release branch release/X.Y.0 is branched off of a commit on master that contains all the features we want in the release, this branch is pushed to the official repository. For example for version 3.5.0 the branch release/3.5.0 would be created:

git checkout -b release/3.5.0 <commit>

The release branch should typically only exist for at most a few days.

Hotfix Releases (Patch)¶

A hotfix release is created whenever we receive a fix for a bug that we believe should be released immediately instead of it only being part of the next regular release. Generally any bugfix qualifies, but it is up to the maintainers to decide whether a hotfix release should be created.

The hotfix release branch hotfix/X.Y.Z is created by branching off at the previous release tag (X.Y.Z-1). For example, if the latest version is 3.5.2, the next hotfix will be on branch hotfix/3.5.3:

git checkout -b hotfix/3.5.3 3.5.2

Since the PRs for such bugfixes are often not created by maintainers, they will often not be based on the latest release tag, but just be branched off master because contributors don't necessarily know about this branching model and also may well not know whether a hotfix will be created for a certain bugfix.

In case a PR containing a bugfix that is destined for a patch release is not branched off the previous release, a maintainer creates the proper release branch and cherry-picks the bugfix commits.

Note

Alternatively, the contributor can also git rebase --onto to base the branch off the previous release tag. However, in most cases it makes sense for a maintainer to create the release branch since they will also need to add a Release Commit to it.

Once the release branch is created and contains the right commits, the maintainer should follow Publishing a new Release to finish this patch release.

If multiple bugfixes are submitted in close succession, they can all be cherry-picked onto the same patch release branch to not create many individual release with only a single fix. The maintainer can also decide to leave the release branch for this patch release open for a week in order to possibly combine multiple bugfixes into a single release.

Publishing a new Release¶

The process for publishing a release is the same for all release types. It goes as follows:

A Release commit is added to the tip of the release branch.
A draft PR is opened for the release branch. This PR MUST NOT be merged in GitHub's interface, it is only here for review, merging happens at the commandline.
After approval, the GitHub release publishing tool is used to publish the release and tag the tip of the release branch (the release commit).
After the tag is created, the release branch is manually merged into master. Here it is vitally important that the history of the release branch does not change and so we use git merge. We do it manually because using git merge is disabled on PRs.

git checkout master
git merge <release-branch>
git push origin

After the tag is created, the release branch can be deleted with git push origin :<release-branch>.
Work through the After-Release Checklist.

Here <release-branch> is either a release/X.Y.0 branch or a hotfix/X.Y.Z branch.

Release Commit¶

When merging, a release commit must be at the tip of the release branch.

The release commit needs to update the version number in:

version.txt

The commit message contains the Changelog for this release.

Changelog¶

Each release should come with a changelog briefly explaining what has changed for the user. It should generally be separated into 'Deprecations', 'Features', and 'Fixes', with 'Breaking Changes' listed separately at the top.

See old releases for how to format the changelog.

Since major releases generally break backwards compatibility in some way, their changelog should also prominently feature precisely what breaking changes were introduced. If suitable, maybe even separate documentation dedicated to the migration should be written.

After-Release Checklist¶

Make sure all the new functionality is documented on the wiki
Mark deprecated features appropriately (see Deprecations)
Remove all unreleased notes from the wiki (not for patch releases)
Inform packagers of new release in #1971. Mention any dependency changes and any changes to the build workflow. Also mention any new files are created by the installation.
Create a source archive named polybar-<version>.tar. The repository contains a script that automates this:

./common/release-archive.sh <version>

Update the github release with a download section that contains a link to polybar-<version>.tar and its sha256.
Create a PR that updates the AUR PKGBUILD files for the polybar and polybar-git packages (push after the .tar file was created).

Deprecations¶

If any publicly facing part of polybar is being deprecated, it should be marked as such in the code, through warnings/errors in the log, and by comments in the wiki. Every deprecated functionality is kept until the next major release and removed there, unless it has not been deprecated in a minor release before.

Getting Help¶

Polybar Wiki
Gitter
/r/polybar on reddit
#polybar on chat.freenode.net

Polybar Documentation¶

Actions¶

polybar(1)¶

SYNOPSIS¶

DESCRIPTION¶

OPTIONS¶

AUTHOR¶

REPORTING BUGS¶

SEE ALSO¶

polybar(5)¶

Description¶

Syntax¶

Section Headers¶

Keys¶

Empty Lines & Comments¶

SEE ALSO¶

Packaging Polybar¶

First Steps¶

Packaging¶

Gathering the Source Code¶

Configuring and Compiling¶

Finishing Up¶

Release Workflow¶

Drafting a new Release¶

Regular Releases (Major, Minor)¶

Hotfix Releases (Patch)¶

Publishing a new Release¶

Release Commit¶

Changelog¶

After-Release Checklist¶

Deprecations¶

Getting Help¶