3 Michael Stapelberg <michael+i3@stapelberg.de>
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"
78 pidfile = "/var/run/dhclient*.pid"
82 pidfile = "/var/run/vpnc/pid"
86 format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
94 format = "T: %degrees °C"
95 path = "/sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input"
101 -------------------------------------------------------------
105 The +colors+ directive will disable all colors if you set it to +false+. You can
106 also specify the colors that will be used to display "good", "degraded" or "bad"
107 values using the +color_good+, +color_degraded+ or +color_bad+ directives,
108 respectively. Those directives are only used if color support is not disabled by
109 the +colors+ directive. The input format for color values is the canonical RGB
110 hexadecimal triplet (with no separators between the colors), prefixed by a hash
113 *Example configuration*:
114 -------------------------------------------------------------
115 color_good = "#00FF00"
116 -------------------------------------------------------------
118 Likewise, you can use the +color_separator+ directive to specify the color that
119 will be used to paint the separator bar. The separator is always output in
120 color, even when colors are disabled by the +colors+ directive.
122 The +interval+ directive specifies the time in seconds for which i3status will
123 sleep before printing the next status line.
125 Using +output_format+ you can chose which format strings i3status should
126 use in its output. Currently available are:
129 i3bar comes with i3 and provides a workspace bar which does the right thing in
130 multi-monitor situations. It also comes with tray support and can display the
131 i3status output. This output type uses JSON to pass as much meta-information to
132 i3bar as possible (like colors, which blocks can be shortened in which way,
135 Dzen is a general purpose messaging, notification and menuing program for X11.
136 It was designed to be scriptable in any language and integrate well with window
137 managers like dwm, wmii and xmonad though it will work with any windowmanger
139 xmobar is a minimalistic, text based, status bar. It was designed to work
140 with the xmonad Window Manager.
142 Does not use any color codes. Separates values by the pipe symbol. This should
143 be used with i3bar and can be used for custom scripts.
147 This module gets the IPv6 address used for outgoing connections (that is, the
148 best available public IPv6 address on your computer).
150 *Example format_up*: +%ip+
152 *Example format_down* +no IPv6+
156 Gets used, free, available and total amount of bytes on the given mounted filesystem.
158 *Example order*: +disk /mnt/usbstick+
160 *Example format*: +%free (%avail)/ %total+
164 Expands the given path to a pidfile and checks if the process ID found inside
165 is valid (that is, if the process is running). You can use this to check if
166 a specific application, such as a VPN client or your DHCP client is running.
168 *Example order*: +run_watch DHCP+
170 *Example format*: +%title: %status+
174 Gets the link quality and ESSID of the given wireless network interface. You
175 can specify different format strings for the network being connected or not
178 *Example order*: +wireless wlan0+
180 *Example format*: +W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate) %ip+
184 Gets the IP address and (if possible) the link speed of the given ethernet
185 interface. Getting the link speed requires the cap_net_admin capability. Set
186 it using +setcap cap_net_admin=ep $(which i3status)+.
188 *Example order*: +ethernet eth0+
190 *Example format*: +E: %ip (%speed)+
194 Gets the status (charging, discharging, running), percentage and remaining
195 time of the given battery and when it's estimated to be empty. If you want
196 to use the last full capacity instead of the design capacity (when using
197 the design capacity, it may happen that your battery is at 23% when fully
198 charged because it’s old. In general, I want to see it this way, because
199 it tells me how worn off my battery is.), just specify
200 +last_full_capacity = true+.
202 If your battery is represented in a non-standard path in /sys, be sure to
203 modify the "path" property accordingly. The first occurence of %d gets replaced
204 with the battery number, but you can just hard-code a path as well.
206 *Example order*: +battery 0+
208 *Example format*: +%status %remaining (%emptytime)+
212 Gets the temperature of the given thermal zone.
214 *Example order*: +cpu_temperature 0+
216 *Example format*: +T: %degrees °C+
220 Gets the percentual CPU usage from +/proc/stat+.
222 *Example order*: +cpu_usage+
224 *Example format*: +%usage+
228 Gets the system load (number of processes waiting for CPU time in the last
229 1, 5 and 15 minutes).
231 *Example order*: +load+
233 *Example format*: +%1min %5min %15min+
237 Formats the current system time. See +strftime(3)+ for the format.
239 *Example order*: +time+
241 *Example format*: +%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S+
245 Outputs the current discordian date in user-specified format. See +ddate(1)+ for
246 details on the format string.
247 *Note*: Neither *%.* nor *%X* are implemented yet.
249 *Example order*: +ddate+
251 *Example format*: +%{%a, %b %d%}, %Y%N - %H+
255 Outputs the volume of the specified mixer on the specified device. Works only
256 on Linux because it uses ALSA.
258 *Example order*: +volume master+
260 *Example format*: +♪: %volume+
262 *Example configuration*:
263 -------------------------------------------------------------
265 format = "♪: %volume"
270 -------------------------------------------------------------
272 == Using i3status with dzen2
274 After installing dzen2, you can directly use it with i3status. Just ensure that
275 +output_format+ is set to +dzen2+.
277 *Example for usage of i3status with dzen2*:
278 --------------------------------------------------------------
279 i3status | dzen2 -fg white -ta r -w 1280 \
280 -fn "-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-C-70-iso8859-1"
281 --------------------------------------------------------------
283 == Using i3status with xmobar
285 To get xmobar to start, you might need to copy the default configuration
286 file to +~/.xmobarrc+. Also, ensure that the +output_format+ option for i3status
289 *Example for usage of i3status with xmobar*:
290 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
291 i3status | xmobar -o -t "%StdinReader%" -c "[Run StdinReader]"
292 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
294 == What about memory usage or CPU frequency?
296 While talking about two specific things, please understand this section as a
297 general explanation why your favorite information is not included in i3status.
299 Let’s talk about memory usage specifically. It is hard to measure memory in a
300 way which is accurate or meaningful. An in-depth understanding of how paging
301 and virtual memory work in your operating system is required. Furthermore, even
302 if we had a well-defined way of displaying memory usage and you would
303 understand it, I think that it’s not helpful to repeatedly monitor your memory
304 usage. One reason for that is that I have not run out of memory in the last few
305 years. Memory has become so cheap that even in my 4 year old notebook, I have
306 8 GiB of RAM. Another reason is that your operating system will do the right
307 thing anyway: Either you have not enough RAM for your workload, but you need to
308 do it anyway, then your operating system will swap. Or you don’t have enough
309 RAM and you want to restrict your workload so that it fits, then the operating
310 system will kill the process using too much RAM and you can act accordingly.
312 For CPU frequency, the situation is similar. Many people don’t understand how
313 frequency scaling works precisely. The generally recommended CPU frequency
314 governor ("ondemand") changes the CPU frequency far more often than i3status
315 could display it. The display number is therefore often incorrect and doesn’t
316 tell you anything useful either.
318 In general, i3status wants to display things which you would often look at
319 anyways, like the current date/time, whether you are connected to a WiFi
320 network or not, and if you have enough disk space to fit that 4.3 GiB download.
322 However, if you need to look at some kind of information more than once in a
323 while (like checking repeatedly how full your RAM is), you are probably better
324 of with a script doing that, which pops up an alert when your RAM usage reaches
327 == External scripts/programs with i3status
329 In i3status, we don’t want to implement process management again. Therefore,
330 there is no module to run arbitrary scripts or commands. Instead, you should
331 use your shell, for example like this:
333 *Example for prepending the i3status output*:
334 --------------------------------------------------------------
336 # shell script to prepend i3status with more stuff
341 echo "mystuff | $line" || exit 1
343 --------------------------------------------------------------
345 Put that in some script, say +.bin/my_i3status.sh+ and execute that instead of i3status.
349 +strftime(3)+, +date(1)+, +glob(3)+, +dzen2(1)+, +xmobar(1)+
353 Michael Stapelberg and contributors
361 Fernando Tarlá Cardoso Lemos