Yrurtj

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 i3status but 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

# 💎 💻 💡 🔌 ⚡ 📁 |

echo $uptime_formatted ↑ $linux_version 🐧 $battery_status 🔋 $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.

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" 🔇": 

$4" 🔉"}' |

tr -d )



# Additional emojis and characters for the status bar:

# Electricity: ⚡ ↯ ⭍ 🔌

# Audio: 🔈 🔊 🎧 🎶 🎵 🎤

# Separators: | ❘ ❙ ❚

# Misc: 🐧 💎 💻 💡 ⭐ 📁 ↑ ↓ ✉ ✅ ❎

echo $audio_volume $battery_info 🔋 $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.