Boost Your i3wm Experience with i3-dstatus

Boost Your i3wm Experience with i3-dstatus

Are you a user of i3wm, but find the default statusline lacking in flexibility and customization options? Look no further than i3-dstatus – a DIY statusline generator that can revolutionize your i3wm experience. With i3-dstatus, you can display system information and create a personalized statusline tailored to your needs, all without the hassle of learning a complicated plugin API.

Addressing the Limitations of i3status

While i3wm comes with i3status, a statusline tool, it has several limitations that may not meet your requirements. i3status lacks a plugin interface, making it difficult to extend and customize. Moreover, it relies on polling for information, which can be resource-intensive. Additionally, i3status has a cumbersome config file format, making it challenging to configure.

Recognizing these limitations, i3-dstatus was developed to provide users with a more flexible and powerful statusline solution. By leveraging interprocess communication using DBUS, i3-dstatus allows you to update the statusline from multiple processes, without the need for a complicated plugin API. This means you can update your statusline from any programming language, even from the command line or a cron job.

Easy Installation and Usage

Getting started with i3-dstatus is simple. It can be easily installed from PyPI with a single command:

pip install i3-dstatus

Once installed, you can use i3-dstatus as your status command in your i3wm bar block by adding the following line to your i3 configuration file:

bar {
status_command i3-dstatus clock
}

You can pass the path of the statusline generator scripts you want to run as arguments to i3-dstatus. These scripts can be either relative paths, which will start the included generators from the i3-dstatus installation, or absolute paths. The order of the generators on the command line determines their appearance on the i3bar.

Configuration Made Simple

To further customize your statusline, i3-dstatus provides a configuration file option. By default, i3-dstatus looks for the ~/.i3-dstatus.conf file for configuration options. This file should be a single YAML object and allows you to define various settings for your statusline. Detailed documentation on the configuration file options can be found in the i3-dstatus repository.

Updating the Statusline

With i3-dstatus, updating the statusline is a breeze. The DBUS service exposed by i3-dstatus offers a show_block method that allows you to update the statusline dynamically. By passing a dictionary that conforms to the i3bar input protocol, you can easily show or clear blocks on your statusline.

Updating the statusline from a Python script is as simple as utilizing the dbus-next library. Here’s an example script:

“`python
from dbus_next.aio import MessageBus
from dbus_next import Variant

bus = await MessageBus().connect()
introspection = await bus.introspect(‘com.dubstepdish.i3dstatus’, ‘/com/dubstepdish/i3dstatus’)
obj = bus.get_proxy_object(‘com.dubstepdish.i3dstatus’, ‘/com/dubstepdish/i3dstatus’)
i3dstatus = obj.get_interface(‘com.dubstepdish.i3dstatus’)
await i3dstatus.call_show_block({
‘name’: Variant(‘s’, ‘test’),
‘full_text’: Variant(‘s’, ‘hello world’)
})
“`

You can update the statusline from any programming language that has DBUS bindings, giving you flexibility and freedom to control your statusline from your preferred language.

Community-Driven Development

i3-dstatus is an open-source community project that welcomes contributions and feedback. Whether you find a bug, have a feature request, want to contribute documentation, or create new generators, the i3-dstatus community encourages your participation.

Conclusion

With i3-dstatus, you no longer have to settle for the limitations of the default i3status. This DIY statusline generator empowers you to create a flexible and highly customizable statusline that reflects your unique preferences and needs. Say goodbye to the constraints of i3status and discover the potential of i3-dstatus to elevate your i3wm experience.

So why wait? Install i3-dstatus today and unlock a new level of productivity and personalization in your i3wm setup.

[i3wm]: Improved tiling window manager
[DIY]: Do-it-yourself