Oatbar

Oatbar a standalone desktop bar that can be used with various WMs and DEs focused on customizability.

If you have experience with bars like i3bar, you are familiar with the protocols through which bar plugins stream data to be displayed on the bar.

The usual format is text with some formatting capabilities. More complex widgets like progress bars, selections or images are usually limited to built-in modules. Other bars choose the opposite approach and function exsentialy as widget toolkits.

Oatbar combines the best of both worlds

• Embrace text formats popular in the ecosystem
• Represent custom data in various widgets without coding
• Provide plugins to support common tasks

Example:

[[bar]]
height=32
blocks_left=["workspace"]
blocks_right=["clock"]

[[command]]
name="clock"
command="date '+%a %b %e %H:%M:%S'"
interval=1

[[command]]
name="desktop"
command="oatbar-desktop"

[[block]]
name = 'workspace'
type = 'enum'
active = '${desktop:workspace.active}'
variants = '${desktop:workspace.variants}'
on_mouse_left = "oatbar-desktop $BLOCK_INDEX"

[[block]]
name = 'clock'
type = 'text'
value = '${clock:value}'

Here clock command sends plain text, but desktop streams structured data in JSON. Both are connected to text and selector widgets. desktop ships with oatbar, but it is an external tool to the bar, as can be your script.

Next Steps

• Installation

• Configuration