i3status(1)
===========
Michael Stapelberg <michael@i3wm.org>
-v2.10, January 2016
+v2.12, May 2018
== NAME
== 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.
+i3status is a small program 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
order += "ethernet eth0"
order += "battery 0"
order += "cpu_temperature 0"
+order += "memory"
order += "load"
order += "tztime local"
order += "tztime berlin"
}
ethernet eth0 {
- # if you use %speed, i3status requires the cap_net_admin capability
format_up = "E: %ip (%speed)"
format_down = "E: down"
}
tztime local {
format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
+ hide_if_equals_localtime = true
}
tztime berlin {
path = "/sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input"
}
+memory {
+ format = "%used"
+ threshold_degraded = "10%"
+ format_degraded = "MEMORY: %free"
+}
+
disk "/" {
format = "%free"
}
+
+read_file uptime {
+ path = "/proc/uptime"
+}
+
-------------------------------------------------------------
=== General
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
+Using +output_format+ you can choose which format strings i3status should
use in its output. Currently available are:
i3bar::
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
+managers like dwm, wmii and xmonad though it will work with any window manager
xmobar::
xmobar is a minimalistic, text based, status bar. It was designed to work
with the xmonad Window Manager.
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
+modules are separated. You can also disable the default separator altogether by
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
+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 "`&`", "`<`",
for generated content (e.g. wireless ESSID, time).
*Example configuration*:
+
-------------------------------------------------------------
general {
output_format = "xmobar"
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.
+connected or not connected. The quality is padded with leading zeroes by
+default; to pad with something else use +format_quality+.
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+
+*Example format_up*: +W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate / %frequency) %ip+
+
+*Example format_down*: +W: down+
+
+*Example format_quality*: +"%03d%s"+
=== 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)+.
+interface. If no IPv4 address is available and an IPv6 address is, it will be
+displayed.
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)+
+*Example format_up*: +E: %ip (%speed)+
+
+*Example format_down*: +E: down+
=== Battery
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+.
++last_full_capacity = true+. You can show seconds in the remaining time and
+empty time estimations by setting +hide_seconds = false+.
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,
+your system. The first occurrence 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
It is possible to define a degraded_threshold that will color the load
value yellow in case the CPU average over the last interval is getting
-higher than the configured threshold. Defaults to 90. The ouput format
+higher than the configured threshold. Defaults to 90. The output format
when above degraded threshold can be customized with
format_above_degraded_threshold.
+For displaying the Nth CPU usage, you can use the %cpu<N> format string,
+starting from %cpu0. This feature is currently not supported in FreeBSD.
+
*Example order*: +cpu_usage+
-*Example format*: +%usage+
+*Example format*: +all: %usage CPU_0: %cpu0 CPU_1: %cpu1+
*Example max_threshold*: +75+
*Example format_above_degraded_threshold*: +Warning above degraded threshold: %usage+
+=== Memory
+
+Gets the memory usage from system on a Linux system from +/proc/meminfo+. Other
+systems are currently not supported.
+
+As format placeholders, +total+, +used+, +free+, +available+ and +shared+ are
+available. These will print human readable values. It's also possible to prefix
+the placeholders with +percentage_+ to get a value in percent.
+
+It's possible to define a +threshold_degraded+ and a +threshold_critical+ to
+color the status bar output in yellow or red, if the available memory falls
+below the given threshold. Possible values of the threshold can be any integer,
+suffixed with an iec symbol (+T+, +G+, +M+, +K+). Alternatively, the integer
+can be suffixed by a percent sign, which then rets evaluated relatively to
+total memory.
+
+If the +format_degraded+ parameter is given and either the critical or the
+degraded threshold applies, +format_degraded+ will get used as format string.
+It acts equivalently to +format+.
+
+As Linux' meminfo doesn't expose the overall memory in use, there are multiple
+methods to distinguish the actually used memory.
+
+*Example memory_used_method*: +memavailable+ ("total memory" - "MemAvailable", matches +free+ command)
+
+*Example memory_used_method*: +classical+ ("total memory" - "free" - "buffers" - "cache", matches gnome system monitor)
+
+*Example order*: +memory+
+
+*Example format*: +%free %available (%used) / %total+
+
+*Example format*: +%percentage_used used, %percentage_free free, %percentage_shared shared+
+
+*Example threshold_degraded*: +10%+
+
+*Example threshold_critical*: +5%+
+
+*Example format_degraded*: +Memory LOW: %free+
+
=== Load
Gets the system load (number of processes waiting for CPU time in the last
*Example format*: +%1min %5min %15min+
-*Example max_threshold*: +"0,1"+
+*Example max_threshold*: +"0.1"+
*Example format_above_threshold*: +Warning: %1min %5min %15min+
+/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin+ you can set timezone to +Europe/Berlin+
in the +tztime+ module.
To override the locale settings of your environment, set the +locale+ option.
+To display time only when the set timezone has different time from localtime, set
++hide_if_equals_localtime+ to true.
*Example order*: +tztime berlin+
format = "<span foreground='#ffffff'>time:</span> %time"
format_time = "%H:%M %Z"
timezone = "Europe/Berlin"
+ hide_if_equals_localtime = true
}
-------------------------------------------------------------
*Example order*: +volume master+
-*Example format*: +♪: %volume+
+*Example format*: +♪ (%devicename): %volume+
-*Example format_muted*: +♪: 0%%+
+*Example format_muted*: +♪ (%devicename): 0%%+
*Example configuration*:
-------------------------------------------------------------
}
-------------------------------------------------------------
+=== File Contents
+
+Outputs the contents of the specified file. You can use this to check contents
+of files on your system, for example /proc/uptime. By default the function only
+reads the first 254 characters of the file, if you want to override this set
+the Max_characters option. It will never read beyond the first 4095 characters.
+If the file is not found "no file" will be printed, if the file can't be read
+"error read" will be printed.
+
+*Example order*: read_file UPTIME
+
+*Example format*: "%title: %content"
+
+*Example format_bad*: "%title - %errno: %error"
+
+*Example path*: "/proc/uptime"
+
+*Example Max_characters*: 255
+
== Universal module options
When using the i3bar output format, there are a few additional options that
== Using i3status with dzen2
After installing dzen2, you can directly use it with i3status. Just ensure that
-+output_format+ is set to +dzen2+.
++output_format+ is set to +dzen2+. *Note*: +min_width+ is not supported.
*Example for usage of i3status with dzen2*:
--------------------------------------------------------------
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+.
+is set to +xmobar+. *Note*: +min_width+ is not supported.
*Example for usage of i3status with xmobar*:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
i3status | xmobar -o -t "%StdinReader%" -c "[Run StdinReader]"
---------------------------------------------------------------------
-== What about memory usage or CPU frequency?
+== What about CPU frequency?
-While talking about two specific things, please understand this section as a
+While talking about 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
+Let’s talk about CPU frequency specifically. 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
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.
+while, you are probably better off with a script doing that, which pops up.
+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
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/master/contrib
+contrib/ folder, see https://github.com/i3/i3status/tree/master/contrib
== SIGNALS
projects / i3 / i3status / blobdiff