oxbar

oxbar is a X11 status bar for OpenBSD showing various system stats. It has a configurable display and works out-of-the-box on most modern window managers in an intuitive fashion. oxbar supports FreeType font rendering and styling, true transparency & alpha blending on all UI components (including the root window), and a simple configuration format that can concisely support multiple themes.

It's motivated by the frequent complaints/threats I get about my old xstatbar and its many hacks. Shaming works 'yo.

oxbar is released under an ISC license

features

• True transparency support with a compositing window manager
  • I recommend compton (in ports) over xcompmgr (in base)
• FreeType fonts styled & rendered easily, with all font options
• Fully configurable display via the command line or config file
• Left/Right/Center aligned widgets, and any combination of those
• Configuration file supports multiple themes that can be chosen at runtime
• Types of stats supported:
  • Battery/AC status, progress bar, time remaining
  • Brightness level w/ progress bar (via Xrandr(3))
  • Volume level w/ progress bar
  • Number of processes
  • Memory usage & breakdown
  • CPUs usage & breakdown w/ or w/out charts
  • WiFi signal strength
  • Current date/time (is that a status?)
  • Others forthcoming

more screenshots

oxbar's default look (with no options):

Other themes, all included in the file sample.oxbar.conf:

islands: each widget is an island, with true transparency between

islands-colorful: like islands, but each widget is a different color

minimal: a dark, text only display

pastels: a pastel based theme with widgets tightly packed

ryan: what my setup looks like

xstatbar: looks just like it's predecessor

installing

There is no port/package (yet), as oxbar is still under active development. To build & install, you'll need to first install 2 dependencies, pango and cairo, and then clone this repo and run make install.

Roughly:

 $ doas pkg_add pango cairo      # install dependencies (as root)
 $ make                          # build oxbar
 $ doas make install             # install globally (as root)
 -or-
 $ PREFIX=~/local make install   # install local to a user (or anywhere)

usage

Full man page available here: oxbar(1).

oxbar -H also has a brief description of each command line flag. See the sample configuration sample.oxbar.conf for examples, like the themes above.

i liked xstatbar's look

You can achieve that using the included sample configuration file, saved as ~/.oxbar.conf, and run oxbar via:

oxbar xstatbar

outstanding stuff, prioritized

See the TODO file for various TODO's present throughout the code.

In addition, more long-term stuff I'd like to do, by my priority...

• big refactor: make all widgets 100% config-driven... Basically, eliminate the need for individual widget code in widgets/ entirely, and make them all configurable via a simple syntax. I know how to do most of this, and easily from a configuration standpoint, but not all. My current thoughts would make the configuration too verbose/lengthy, and impractical. Chew on this more, I will...
• gui: icons in the display could help condense it further
• stats: add collector for hw.sensors & a related widget
• stats: add a weather component...i like weather
• when using compton, need '--shadow-exclude 'name = "oxbar"' to disable shadow - how can i automate that?