What is pawbar?

pawbar is a customizable status bar for GNU/Linux systems. Currently it supports wayland compositors but compatibility may be added for X.org and macOS systems.

Installation

Currently, you have to manually compile and install pawbar.

Manual

The following dependencies are required at compile time:

Dependencies

• go
• udev
• librsvg

At runtime, external-monitor brightness additionally needs the i2c-dev kernel module and access to /dev/i2c-*; see the backlight module for the setup.

Clone and compile pawbar

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/nekorg/pawbar
cd pawbar
go build -tags kittyonly .

The kittyonly tag drops the terminal compatibility layer, which pawbar has no use for: it only ever runs inside a kitty it spawned itself. Building without it still works and is what you want if you are testing against upstream vaxis.

Install using the installation script:

./install.sh

Configuration

pawbar is configured using a configuration file.

Configuration file is placed at $HOME/.config/pawbar/pawbar.yaml

Simplest configuration file can be:

right:
  - clock

It sets a right anchored clock module with default configuration

A useful default configuration can be:

bar:
  gap: " "
  truncate_priority:
    - middle
    - right
    - left
left:
  - ws
  - title
middle:
  - clock:
      format: "{time:%a %H:%M}"
      states:
        hover: { format: "{time:%a %H:%M:%S}", fg: indianred }
right:
  - volume:
      on:
        right: { run: "pavucontrol" }
  - gap: " │ "
  - backlight
  - gap: " │ "
  - battery

The config is hot-reloaded on save, and pawbar --check validates it without starting the bar. See Configuration for the full schema.