3 Michael Stapelberg <michael@i3wm.org>
8 i3status - Generates a status line for dzen2 or xmobar
12 i3status [-c configfile] [-h] [-v]
17 Specifies an alternate configuration file path. By default, i3status looks for
18 configuration files in the following order:
21 2. ~/.config/i3status/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/i3status/config if set)
23 4. /etc/xdg/i3status/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/i3status/config if set)
27 i3status is a small program (about 1500 SLOC) for generating a status bar for
28 i3bar, dzen2, xmobar or similar programs. It is designed to be very
29 efficient by issuing a very small number of system calls, as one generally
30 wants to update such a status line every second. This ensures that even under
31 high load, your status bar is updated correctly. Also, it saves a bit of energy
32 by not hogging your CPU as much as spawning the corresponding amount of shell
37 The basic idea of i3status is that you can specify which "modules" should
38 be used (the order directive). You can then configure each module with its
39 own section. For every module, you can specify the output format. See below
40 for a complete reference.
43 -------------------------------------------------------------
45 output_format = "dzen2"
52 order += "run_watch DHCP"
53 order += "run_watch VPN"
54 order += "wireless wlan0"
55 order += "ethernet eth0"
57 order += "cpu_temperature 0"
62 format_up = "W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate) %ip"
63 format_down = "W: down"
67 # if you use %speed, i3status requires the cap_net_admin capability
68 format_up = "E: %ip (%speed)"
69 format_down = "E: down"
73 format = "%status %percentage %remaining %emptytime"
74 path = "/sys/class/power_supply/BAT%d/uevent"
79 pidfile = "/var/run/dhclient*.pid"
83 pidfile = "/var/run/vpnc/pid"
87 format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
95 format = "T: %degrees °C"
96 path = "/sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input"
102 -------------------------------------------------------------
106 The +colors+ directive will disable all colors if you set it to +false+. You can
107 also specify the colors that will be used to display "good", "degraded" or "bad"
108 values using the +color_good+, +color_degraded+ or +color_bad+ directives,
109 respectively. Those directives are only used if color support is not disabled by
110 the +colors+ directive. The input format for color values is the canonical RGB
111 hexadecimal triplet (with no separators between the colors), prefixed by a hash
114 *Example configuration*:
115 -------------------------------------------------------------
116 color_good = "#00FF00"
117 -------------------------------------------------------------
119 Likewise, you can use the +color_separator+ directive to specify the color that
120 will be used to paint the separator bar. The separator is always output in
121 color, even when colors are disabled by the +colors+ directive.
123 The +interval+ directive specifies the time in seconds for which i3status will
124 sleep before printing the next status line.
126 Using +output_format+ you can chose which format strings i3status should
127 use in its output. Currently available are:
130 i3bar comes with i3 and provides a workspace bar which does the right thing in
131 multi-monitor situations. It also comes with tray support and can display the
132 i3status output. This output type uses JSON to pass as much meta-information to
133 i3bar as possible (like colors, which blocks can be shortened in which way,
136 Dzen is a general purpose messaging, notification and menuing program for X11.
137 It was designed to be scriptable in any language and integrate well with window
138 managers like dwm, wmii and xmonad though it will work with any windowmanger
140 xmobar is a minimalistic, text based, status bar. It was designed to work
141 with the xmonad Window Manager.
143 Does not use any color codes. Separates values by the pipe symbol. This should
144 be used with i3bar and can be used for custom scripts.
148 This module gets the IPv6 address used for outgoing connections (that is, the
149 best available public IPv6 address on your computer).
151 *Example format_up*: +%ip+
153 *Example format_down* +no IPv6+
157 Gets used, free, available and total amount of bytes on the given mounted filesystem.
159 These values can also be expressed in percentages with the percentage_used,
160 percentage_free, percentage_avail and percentage_used_of_avail formats.
162 *Example order*: +disk /mnt/usbstick+
164 *Example format*: +%free (%avail)/ %total+
166 *Example format*: +%percentage_used used, %percentage_free free, %percentage_avail avail+
170 Expands the given path to a pidfile and checks if the process ID found inside
171 is valid (that is, if the process is running). You can use this to check if
172 a specific application, such as a VPN client or your DHCP client is running.
174 *Example order*: +run_watch DHCP+
176 *Example format*: +%title: %status+
180 Gets the link quality and ESSID of the given wireless network interface. You
181 can specify different format strings for the network being connected or not
184 *Example order*: +wireless wlan0+
186 *Example format*: +W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate) %ip+
190 Gets the IP address and (if possible) the link speed of the given ethernet
191 interface. Getting the link speed requires the cap_net_admin capability. Set
192 it using +setcap cap_net_admin=ep $(which i3status)+.
194 *Example order*: +ethernet eth0+
196 *Example format*: +E: %ip (%speed)+
200 Gets the status (charging, discharging, running), percentage, remaining
201 time and power consumption (in Watts) of the given battery and when it's
202 estimated to be empty. If you want to use the last full capacity instead of the
203 design capacity (when using the design capacity, it may happen that your
204 battery is at 23% when fully charged because it’s old. In general, I want to
205 see it this way, because it tells me how worn off my battery is.), just specify
206 +last_full_capacity = true+.
208 If your battery is represented in a non-standard path in /sys, be sure to
209 modify the "path" property accordingly. The first occurence of %d gets replaced
210 with the battery number, but you can just hard-code a path as well.
212 It is possible to define a low_threshold that causes the battery text to be
213 colored red. The low_threshold type can be of threshold_type "time" or
214 "percentage". So, if you configure low_threshold to 10 and threshold_type to
215 "time", and your battery lasts another 9 minutes, it will be colored red.
217 *Example order*: +battery 0+
219 *Example format*: +%status %remaining (%emptytime %consumption)+
221 *Example low_threshold*: +30+
223 *Example threshold_type*: +time+
227 Gets the temperature of the given thermal zone. It is possible to
228 define a max_threshold that will color the temperature red in case the
229 specified thermal zone is getting too hot. Defaults to 75 degrees C.
231 *Example order*: +cpu_temperature 0+
233 *Example format*: +T: %degrees °C+
235 *Example max_threshold*: +42+
239 Gets the percentual CPU usage from +/proc/stat+ (Linux) or +sysctl(3)+ (FreeBSD/OpenBSD).
241 *Example order*: +cpu_usage+
243 *Example format*: +%usage+
247 Gets the system load (number of processes waiting for CPU time in the last
248 1, 5 and 15 minutes).
250 *Example order*: +load+
252 *Example format*: +%1min %5min %15min+
256 Formats the current system time. See +strftime(3)+ for the format.
258 *Example order*: +time+
260 *Example format*: +%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S+
264 Outputs the current discordian date in user-specified format. See +ddate(1)+ for
265 details on the format string.
266 *Note*: Neither *%.* nor *%X* are implemented yet.
268 *Example order*: +ddate+
270 *Example format*: +%{%a, %b %d%}, %Y%N - %H+
274 Outputs the volume of the specified mixer on the specified device. Works only
275 on Linux because it uses ALSA.
276 A simplified configuration can be used on FreeBSD and OpenBSD due to
277 the lack of ALSA, the +device+, +mixer+ and +mixder_idx+ options can be
278 ignored on these systems. On these systems the OSS API is used instead to
279 query +/dev/mixer+ directly.
281 *Example order*: +volume master+
283 *Example format*: +♪: %volume+
285 *Example configuration*:
286 -------------------------------------------------------------
288 format = "♪: %volume"
293 -------------------------------------------------------------
295 == Using i3status with dzen2
297 After installing dzen2, you can directly use it with i3status. Just ensure that
298 +output_format+ is set to +dzen2+.
300 *Example for usage of i3status with dzen2*:
301 --------------------------------------------------------------
302 i3status | dzen2 -fg white -ta r -w 1280 \
303 -fn "-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-C-70-iso8859-1"
304 --------------------------------------------------------------
306 == Using i3status with xmobar
308 To get xmobar to start, you might need to copy the default configuration
309 file to +~/.xmobarrc+. Also, ensure that the +output_format+ option for i3status
312 *Example for usage of i3status with xmobar*:
313 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
314 i3status | xmobar -o -t "%StdinReader%" -c "[Run StdinReader]"
315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
317 == What about memory usage or CPU frequency?
319 While talking about two specific things, please understand this section as a
320 general explanation why your favorite information is not included in i3status.
322 Let’s talk about memory usage specifically. It is hard to measure memory in a
323 way which is accurate or meaningful. An in-depth understanding of how paging
324 and virtual memory work in your operating system is required. Furthermore, even
325 if we had a well-defined way of displaying memory usage and you would
326 understand it, I think that it’s not helpful to repeatedly monitor your memory
327 usage. One reason for that is that I have not run out of memory in the last few
328 years. Memory has become so cheap that even in my 4 year old notebook, I have
329 8 GiB of RAM. Another reason is that your operating system will do the right
330 thing anyway: Either you have not enough RAM for your workload, but you need to
331 do it anyway, then your operating system will swap. Or you don’t have enough
332 RAM and you want to restrict your workload so that it fits, then the operating
333 system will kill the process using too much RAM and you can act accordingly.
335 For CPU frequency, the situation is similar. Many people don’t understand how
336 frequency scaling works precisely. The generally recommended CPU frequency
337 governor ("ondemand") changes the CPU frequency far more often than i3status
338 could display it. The display number is therefore often incorrect and doesn’t
339 tell you anything useful either.
341 In general, i3status wants to display things which you would look at
342 occasionally anyways, like the current date/time, whether you are connected to
343 a WiFi network or not, and if you have enough disk space to fit that 4.3 GiB
346 However, if you need to look at some kind of information more than once in a
347 while (like checking repeatedly how full your RAM is), you are probably better
348 off with a script doing that, which pops up an alert when your RAM usage reaches
349 a certain threshold. After all, the point of computers is not to burden you
350 with additional boring tasks like repeatedly checking a number.
352 == External scripts/programs with i3status
354 In i3status, we don’t want to implement process management again. Therefore,
355 there is no module to run arbitrary scripts or commands. Instead, you should
356 use your shell, for example like this:
358 *Example for prepending the i3status output*:
359 --------------------------------------------------------------
361 # shell script to prepend i3status with more stuff
366 echo "mystuff | $line" || exit 1
368 --------------------------------------------------------------
370 Put that in some script, say +.bin/my_i3status.sh+ and execute that instead of i3status.
372 Note that if you want to use the JSON output format (with colors in i3bar), you
373 need to use a slightly more complex wrapper script. There are examples in the
374 contrib/ folder, see http://code.i3wm.org/i3status/tree/contrib
378 +strftime(3)+, +date(1)+, +glob(3)+, +dzen2(1)+, +xmobar(1)+
382 Michael Stapelberg and contributors
390 Fernando Tarlá Cardoso Lemos