st8 - a fast, minimal status bar

st8 is a clone of slstatus rewritten in Go.

Outputs

To be complainant with multiple systems, st8 understands multiple outputs:

• stdout: prints every block delimited by | to stdout.
• xsetname: sets roots (the window managers) name to blocks delimited by |.
• sway: use swaybar-protocol(7) via stdout/stdin. Should work on i3 but is untested yet.

Format Syntax

st8 uses blocks (like in i3blocks or dwmblocks), one block should have one function. The configuration, usually located at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/st8/{status,notify}.conf or ~/.config/st8/{status,notify}.conf follows the INI-format.

Keys and values are stripped from leading and trailing whitespaces, except a value can be quoted (using ") and the whitespaces between the quotes are conserved.

Blocks

The section-name corresponds to the component. Some components take arguments which can be specified in the section. For example:

[battery_perc]
battery = BAT0

Special Keys

Some keys may be overwritten by the component or ignored by the output-driver.

• text-color: Color of the text: #RRGGBB or #RRGGBBAA
• background-color: Color of the block-background: #RRGGBB or #RRGGBBAA
• border-color: Color of the block-border: #RRGGBB or #RRGGBBAA
• border-top: Width in pixel of the top-border (default 1px)
• border-bottom: Width in pixel of the bottom-border (default 1px)
• border-left: Width in pixel of the left-border (default 1px)
• border-right: Width in pixel of the right-border (default 1px)
• width: Minimum width of this block, either in pixels (12px), in space-widths (6wh) or the width of a string ab-cd
• align: Alignment of the text if block is wider, either left, center or right (default left)
• separate: Put a separator right to this block (default yes)
• separator-width: With separator right to this block (default yes)
• markup: Use markup: either none or pango (default none)
• format: Format the resulting text, first occurrence of {} is replaced with the actual text and can contain optional padding: (default {}) Padding is done like in C's printf:
  • -010 pads with 0's until a length of 10 chars, aligns the text left
  • 5 pads with spaces until a length of 5 chars, aligns the text right
  • _7 pads with _'s until a length of 7 chars, aligns the text right

Notes:

• If a function fails or is unavailable, it returns an <error>.

Components

function	description
battery_perc	battery percentage
battery_remaining	battery name (BAT0)
battery_state	battery charging state
cat	read arbitrary file
cpu_freq	cpu frequency in MHz
cpu_perc1	cpu usage in percent
datetime	date and time
disk_free	free disk space in GB
disk_perc	disk usage in percent
disk_total	total disk space in GB
disk_used	used disk space in GB
entropy	available entropy
gid	GID of current user
hostname	hostname
ipv4	IPv4 address
ipv6	IPv6 address
kernel_release	current kernel
load_avg	load average
netspeed_rx1	receive network speed
netspeed_tx1	transfer network speed
num_files	number of files in a directory path
ram_free	free memory in GB
ram_perc	memory usage in percent
ram_total	total memory size in GB
ram_used	used memory in GB
run_command	runs shell command
swap_free	free swap in GB
swap_perc	swap usage in percent
swap_total	total swap size in GB
swap_used	used swap in GB
temp	temperature in degree celsius
uid	UID of current user
up	interface is running
uptime	system uptime
username	username of current user
wifi_essid	WiFi ESSID
wifi_perc	WiFi signal in percent

New in st8:

function	description
notify_appname2	senders name
notify_appicon2	senders icon
notify_summary2	notification summary
notify_body2	notification content
notify_actions2	notification actions, comma-seperated
period_command	runs command at an interval
counter	counter which increases by clicking

¹Some functions require at least two runs, e.g. netspeed_* must calculate its speed over time.

²Do only work in notify.txt

Notes:

• period_command is non-blocking and is meant for heavy commands which does not have to be run every period, e.g. checking for updates. run_command is blocking and is meant for lightweight commands, e.g. sv status sshd

Not implemented (yet)

function	description
vol_perc	OSS/ALSA volume in percent
keyboard_indicators	caps/num lock indicators
keymap	layout (variant) of current

If you want to add a function, look at the other implementations in component/ and add the function in component/interface.go.

Notifications

st8 also implements a lightweight D-Bus notification daemon (org.freedesktop.Notifications). You can send notifications from scripts using tools like notify-send:

notify-send "Build finished" "Your code compiled successfully."

These notifications will appear inline in your status bar, replacing the output temporarily.

License

This project uses zlib-license.