i3status(1)
NAME
i3status - Generates a status line for i3bar, dzen2, xmobar or lemonbar
SYNOPSIS
i3status [-c configfile] [-h] [-v]
OPTIONS
-c
Specifies an alternate configuration file path. By default,
i3status looks for configuration files in the following order:
1. ~/.i3status.conf
2. ~/.config/i3status/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/i3status/config
if set)
3. /etc/i3status.conf
4. /etc/xdg/i3status/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/i3status/config
if set)
DESCRIPTION
i3status is a small program (about 1500 SLOC) for generating a status bar for i3bar, dzen2, xmobar, lemonbar or similar programs. It is designed to be very efficient by issuing a very small number of system calls, as one generally wants to update such a status line every second. This ensures that even under high load, your status bar is updated correctly. Also, it saves a bit of energy by not hogging your CPU as much as spawning the corresponding amount of shell commands would.
CONFIGURATION
The basic idea of i3status is that you can specify which "modules"
should be used (the order directive). You can then configure each
module with its own section. For every module, you can specify the
output format. See below for a complete reference.
Sample configuration.
general {
output_format = "dzen2"
colors = true
interval = 5
}
order += "ipv6"
order += "disk /"
order += "run_watch DHCP"
order += "run_watch VPNC"
order += "path_exists VPN"
order += "wireless wlan0"
order += "ethernet eth0"
order += "battery 0"
order += "cpu_temperature 0"
order += "load"
order += "tztime local"
order += "tztime berlin"
wireless wlan0 {
format_up = "W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate) %ip"
format_down = "W: down"
}
ethernet eth0 {
# if you use %speed, i3status requires the cap_net_admin capability
format_up = "E: %ip (%speed)"
format_down = "E: down"
}
battery 0 {
format = "%status %percentage %remaining %emptytime"
format_down = "No battery"
status_chr = " CHR"
status_bat = " BAT"
status_full = " FULL"
path = "/sys/class/power_supply/BAT%d/uevent"
low_threshold = 10
}
run_watch DHCP {
pidfile = "/var/run/dhclient*.pid"
}
run_watch VPNC {
# file containing the PID of a vpnc process
pidfile = "/var/run/vpnc/pid"
}
path_exists VPN {
# path exists when a VPN tunnel launched by nmcli/nm-applet is active
path = "/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/tun0"
}
tztime local {
format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
}
tztime berlin {
format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z"
timezone = "Europe/Berlin"
}
load {
format = "%5min"
}
cpu_temperature 0 {
format = "T: %degrees C"
path = "/sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input"
}
disk "/" {
format = "%free"
}
General
The colors directive will disable all colors if you set it to false.
You can also specify the colors that will be used to display "good",
"degraded" or "bad" values using the color_good, color_degraded or
color_bad directives, respectively. Those directives are only used if
color support is not disabled by the colors directive. The input format
for color values is the canonical RGB hexadecimal triplet (with no
separators between the colors), prefixed by a hash character ("#").
Example configuration:
color_good = "#00FF00"
Likewise, you can use the color_separator directive to specify the
color that will be used to paint the separator bar. The separator is
always output in color, even when colors are disabled by the colors
directive. This option has no effect when output_format is set to i3bar
or none.
The interval directive specifies the time in seconds for which i3status
will sleep before printing the next status line.
Using output_format you can chose which format strings i3status should
use in its output. Currently available are:
i3bar
i3bar comes with i3 and provides a workspace bar which does the
right thing in multi-monitor situations. It also comes with tray
support and can display the i3status output. This output type uses
JSON to pass as much meta-information to i3bar as possible (like
colors, which blocks can be shortened in which way, etc.).
dzen2
Dzen is a general purpose messaging, notification and menuing
program for X11. It was designed to be scriptable in any language
and integrate well with window managers like dwm, wmii and xmonad
though it will work with any windowmanger
xmobar
xmobar is a minimalistic, text based, status bar. It was designed
to work with the xmonad Window Manager.
lemonbar
lemonbar is a lightweight bar based entirely on XCB. It has full
UTF-8 support and is EWMH compliant.
term
Use ANSI Escape sequences to produce a terminal-output as close as
possible to the graphical outputs. This makes debugging your config
file a little bit easier because the terminal-output of i3status
becomes much more readable, but should only used for such quick
glances, because it will only support very basic output-features
(for example you only get 3 bits of color depth).
none
Does not use any color codes. Separates values by the pipe symbol
by default. This should be used with i3bar and can be used for
custom scripts.
It's also possible to use the color_good, color_degraded, color_bad
directives to define specific colors per module. If one of these
directives is defined in a module section its value will override the
value defined in the general section just for this module.
If you don't fancy the vertical separators between modules
i3status/i3bar uses by default, you can employ the separator directive
to configure how modules are separated. You can either disable the
default separator altogether setting it to the empty string. You might
then define separation as part of a module's format string. This is
your only option when using the i3bar output format as the separator is
drawn by i3bar directly otherwise. For the other output formats, the
provided non-empty string will be automatically enclosed with the
necessary coloring bits if color support is enabled.
i3bar supports Pango markup, allowing your format strings to specify
font color, size, etc. by setting the markup directive to "pango". Note
that the ampersand ("&"), less-than ("<"), greater-than (">"),
single-quote ("'"), and double-quote (""") characters need to be
replaced with "&", "<", ">", "'", and """
respectively. This is done automatically for generated content (e.g.
wireless ESSID, time).
Example configuration:
general {
output_format = "xmobar"
separator = " "
}
order += "load"
order += "disk /"
load {
format = "[ load: %1min, %5min, %15min ]"
}
disk "/" {
format = "%avail"
}
IPv6
This module gets the IPv6 address used for outgoing connections (that
is, the best available public IPv6 address on your computer).
Example format_up: %ip
Example format_down: no IPv6
Disk
Gets used, free, available and total amount of bytes on the given
mounted filesystem.
These values can also be expressed in percentages with the
percentage_used, percentage_free, percentage_avail and
percentage_used_of_avail formats.
Byte sizes are presented in a human readable format using a set of
prefixes whose type can be specified via the "prefix_type" option.
Three sets of prefixes are available:
binary
IEC prefixes (Ki, Mi, Gi, Ti) represent multiples of powers of
1024. This is the default.
decimal
SI prefixes (k, M, G, T) represent multiples of powers of 1000.
custom
The custom prefixes (K, M, G, T) represent multiples of powers of
1024.
It is possible to define a low_threshold that causes the disk text to
be displayed using color_bad. The low_threshold type can be of
threshold_type "bytes_free", "bytes_avail", "percentage_free", or
"percentage_avail", where the former two can be prepended by a generic
prefix (k, m, g, t) having prefix_type. So, if you configure
low_threshold to 2, threshold_type to "gbytes_avail", and prefix_type
to "binary", and the remaining available disk space is below 2 GiB, it
will be colored bad. If not specified, threshold_type is assumed to be
"percentage_avail" and low_threshold to be set to 0, which implies no
coloring at all.
You can define a different format with the option "format_not_mounted"
which is used if the path does not exist or is not a mount point. So
you can just empty the output for the given path with adding
format_not_mounted="" to the config section.
Example order: disk /mnt/usbstick
Example format: %free (%avail)/ %total
Example format: %percentage_used used, %percentage_free free,
%percentage_avail avail
Example prefix_type: custom
Example low_threshold: 5
Example threshold_type: percentage_free
Run-watch
Expands the given path to a pidfile and checks if the process ID found
inside is valid (that is, if the process is running). You can use this
to check if a specific application, such as a VPN client or your DHCP
client is running. There also is an option "format_down". You can hide
the output with format_down="".
Example order: run_watch DHCP
Example format: %title: %status
Path-exists
Checks if the given path exists in the filesystem. You can use this to
check if something is active, like for example a VPN tunnel managed by
NetworkManager. There also is an option "format_down". You can hide the
output with format_down="".
Example order: path_exists VPN
Example format: %title: %status
Wireless
Gets the link quality, frequency and ESSID of the given wireless
network interface. You can specify different format strings for the
network being connected or not connected.
The special interface name _first_ will be replaced by the first
wireless network interface found on the system (excluding devices
starting with "lo").
Example order: wireless wlan0
Example format: W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate / %frequency) %ip
Ethernet
Gets the IP address and (if possible) the link speed of the given
ethernet interface. Getting the link speed requires the cap_net_admin
capability. Set it using setcap cap_net_admin=ep $(which i3status).
The special interface name _first_ will be replaced by the first
non-wireless network interface found on the system (excluding devices
starting with "lo").
Example order: ethernet eth0
Example format: E: %ip (%speed)
Battery
Gets the status (charging, discharging, running), percentage, remaining
time and power consumption (in Watts) of the given battery and when
it's estimated to be empty. If you want to use the last full capacity
instead of the design capacity (when using the design capacity, it may
happen that your battery is at 23% when fully charged because it's old.
In general, I want to see it this way, because it tells me how worn off
my battery is.), just specify last_full_capacity = true. You can hide
seconds in the remaining time and empty time estimations by setting
hide_seconds = true.
If you want the battery percentage to be shown without decimals, add
integer_battery_capacity = true.
If your battery is represented in a non-standard path in /sys, be sure
to modify the "path" property accordingly, i.e. pointing to the uevent
file on your system. The first occurence of %d gets replaced with the
battery number, but you can just hard-code a path as well.
It is possible to define a low_threshold that causes the battery text
to be colored red. The low_threshold type can be of threshold_type
"time" or "percentage". So, if you configure low_threshold to 10 and
threshold_type to "time", and your battery lasts another 9 minutes, it
will be colored red.
Optionally custom strings including any UTF-8 symbols can be used for
different battery states. This makes it possible to display individual
symbols for each state (charging, discharging, full) Of course it will
also work with special iconic fonts, such as FontAwesome. If any of
this special status strings is omitted, the default (CHR, BAT, FULL) is
used.
Example order: battery 0
Example format: %status %remaining (%emptytime %consumption)
Example format_down: No battery
Example status_chr: CHR
Example status_bat: BAT
Example status_full: FULL
Example low_threshold: 30
Example threshold_type: time
Example path: /sys/class/power_supply/CMB1/uevent
CPU-Temperature
Gets the temperature of the given thermal zone. It is possible to
define a max_threshold that will color the temperature red in case the
specified thermal zone is getting too hot. Defaults to 75 degrees C.
Example order: cpu_temperature 0
Example format: T: %degrees C
Example max_threshold: 42
Example path: /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input
CPU Usage
Gets the percentual CPU usage from /proc/stat (Linux) or sysctl(3)
(FreeBSD/OpenBSD).
Example order: cpu_usage
Example format: %usage
Load
Gets the system load (number of processes waiting for CPU time in the
last 1, 5 and 15 minutes). It is possible to define a max_threshold
that will color the load value red in case the load average of the last
minute is getting higher than the configured threshold. Defaults to 5.
Example order: load
Example format: %1min %5min %15min
Example max_threshold: "0,1"
Time
Outputs the current time in the local timezone. To use a different
timezone, you can set the TZ environment variable, or use the tztime
module. See strftime(3) for details on the format string.
Example order: time
Example format: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S
TzTime
Outputs the current time in the given timezone. If no timezone is
given, local time will be used. See strftime(3) for details on the
format string. The system's timezone database is usually installed in
/usr/share/zoneinfo. Files below that path make for valid timezone
strings, e.g. for /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin you can set
timezone to Europe/Berlin in the tztime module.
Example order: tztime berlin
Example format: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z
Example timezone: Europe/Berlin
If you would like to use markup in this section, there is a separate
format_time option that is automatically escaped. Its output then
replaces %time in the format string.
Example configuration (markup):
tztime time {
format = "<span foreground='#ffffff'>time:</span> %time"
format_time = "%H:%M %Z"
}
DDate
Outputs the current discordian date in user-specified format. See
ddate(1) for details on the format string. Note: Neither %. nor %X are
implemented yet.
Example order: ddate
Example format: %{%a, %b %d%}, %Y%N - %H
Volume
Outputs the volume of the specified mixer on the specified device.
PulseAudio and ALSA (Linux only) are supported. If PulseAudio is
absent, a simplified configuration can be used on FreeBSD and OpenBSD
due to the lack of ALSA, the device and mixer options can be ignored on
these systems. On these systems the OSS API is used instead to query
/dev/mixer directly if mixer_idx is -1, otherwise
/dev/mixer+mixer_idx+.
To get PulseAudio volume information, one must use the following format
in the device line:
device = "pulse"
or
device = "pulse:N"
where N is the index of the PulseAudio sink. If no sink is specified
the default is used. If the device string is missing or is set to
"default", PulseAudio will be tried if detected and will fallback to
ALSA (Linux) or OSS (FreeBSD/OpenBSD).
Example order: volume master
Example format: : %volume
Example format_muted: : 0%%
Example configuration:
volume master {
format = ": %volume"
format_muted = ": muted (%volume)"
device = "default"
mixer = "Master"
mixer_idx = 0
}
Example configuration (PulseAudio):
volume master {
format = ": %volume"
format_muted = ": muted (%volume)"
device = "pulse:1"
}
UNIVERSAL MODULE OPTIONS
When using the i3bar output format, there are a few additional options
that can be used with all modules to customize their appearance:
align
The alignment policy to use when the minimum width (see below) is
not reached. Either center (default), right or left.
min_width
The minimum width (in pixels) the module should occupy. If the
module takes less space than the specified size, the block will be
padded to the left and/or the right side, according to the defined
alignment policy. This is useful when you want to prevent the whole
status line from shifting when values take more or less space
between each iteration. The option can also be a string. In this
case, the width of the given text determines the minimum width of
the block. This is useful when you want to set a sensible minimum
width regardless of which font you are using, and at what
particular size. Please note that a number enclosed with quotes
will still be treated as a number.
Example configuration:
disk "/" {
format = "%avail"
align = "left"
min_width = 100
}
USING I3STATUS WITH DZEN2
After installing dzen2, you can directly use it with i3status. Just
ensure that output_format is set to dzen2.
Example for usage of i3status with dzen2:
i3status | dzen2 -fg white -ta r -w 1280 \
-fn "-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-C-70-iso8859-1"
USING I3STATUS WITH XMOBAR
To get xmobar to start, you might need to copy the default
configuration file to ~/.xmobarrc. Also, ensure that the output_format
option for i3status is set to xmobar.
Example for usage of i3status with xmobar:
i3status | xmobar -o -t "%StdinReader%" -c "[Run StdinReader]"
WHAT ABOUT MEMORY USAGE OR CPU FREQUENCY?
While talking about two specific things, please understand this section
as a general explanation why your favorite information is not included
in i3status.
Let's talk about memory usage specifically. It is hard to measure
memory in a way which is accurate or meaningful. An in-depth
understanding of how paging and virtual memory work in your operating
system is required. Furthermore, even if we had a well-defined way of
displaying memory usage and you would understand it, I think that it's
not helpful to repeatedly monitor your memory usage. One reason for
that is that I have not run out of memory in the last few years. Memory
has become so cheap that even in my 4 year old notebook, I have 8 GiB
of RAM. Another reason is that your operating system will do the right
thing anyway: Either you have not enough RAM for your workload, but you
need to do it anyway, then your operating system will swap. Or you
don't have enough RAM and you want to restrict your workload so that it
fits, then the operating system will kill the process using too much
RAM and you can act accordingly.
For CPU frequency, the situation is similar. Many people don't
understand how frequency scaling works precisely. The generally
recommended CPU frequency governor ("ondemand") changes the CPU
frequency far more often than i3status could display it. The display
number is therefore often incorrect and doesn't tell you anything
useful either.
In general, i3status wants to display things which you would look at
occasionally anyways, like the current date/time, whether you are
connected to a WiFi network or not, and if you have enough disk space
to fit that 4.3 GiB download.
However, if you need to look at some kind of information more than once
in a while (like checking repeatedly how full your RAM is), you are
probably better off with a script doing that, which pops up an alert
when your RAM usage reaches a certain threshold. After all, the point
of computers is not to burden you with additional boring tasks like
repeatedly checking a number.
EXTERNAL SCRIPTS/PROGRAMS WITH I3STATUS
In i3status, we don't want to implement process management again.
Therefore, there is no module to run arbitrary scripts or commands.
Instead, you should use your shell, for example like this:
Example for prepending the i3status output:
#!/bin/sh
# shell script to prepend i3status with more stuff
i3status | while :
do
read line
echo "mystuff | $line" || exit 1
done
Put that in some script, say .bin/my_i3status.sh and execute that
instead of i3status.
Note that if you want to use the JSON output format (with colors in
i3bar), you need to use a slightly more complex wrapper script. There
are examples in the contrib/ folder, see
http://code.i3wm.org/i3status/tree/contrib
SIGNALS
When receiving SIGUSR1, i3status's nanosleep() will be interrupted and thus you will force an update. You can use killall -USR1 i3status to force an update after changing the system volume, for example.
SEE ALSO
strftime(3), date(1), glob(3), dzen2(1), xmobar(1)
AUTHORS
Michael Stapelberg and contributors Thorsten Toepper Baptiste Daroussin Axel Wagner Fernando Tarl Cardoso Lemos
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