I3STATUS(1)

NAME
i3status - Generates a status line for i3bar, dzen2 or xmobar

SYNOPSIS

i3status [-c configfile] [-h] [-v]

OPTIONS

-c
    Specifies an alternate configuration file path. By default, i3status looks for configuration files in the following order:

        1. ~/.i3status.conf

        2. ~/.config/i3status/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/i3status/config if set)

        3. /etc/i3status.conf

        4. /etc/xdg/i3status/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/i3status/config if set)

DESCRIPTION

i3status is a small program (about 1500 SLOC) for generating a status bar for i3bar, dzen2, xmobar 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

The basic idea of i3status is that you can specify which "modules" should be used (the order directive). You can then configure each module with its own section. For every module, you can specify the output format. See below for a complete reference.

Sample configuration.

    general {
            output_format = "dzen2"
            colors = true
            interval = 5
    }
    order += "ipv6"
    order += "disk /"
    order += "run_watch DHCP"
    order += "run_watch VPNC"
    order += "path_exists VPN"
    order += "wireless wlan0"
    order += "ethernet eth0"
    order += "battery 0"
    order += "cpu_temperature 0"
    order += "load"
    order += "tztime local"
    order += "tztime berlin"
    wireless wlan0 {
            format_up = "W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate) %ip"
            format_down = "W: down"
    }
    ethernet eth0 {
            # if you use %speed, i3status requires the cap_net_admin capability
            format_up = "E: %ip (%speed)"
            format_down = "E: down"
    }
    battery 0 {
            format = "%status %percentage %remaining %emptytime"
            format_down = "No battery"
            status_chr = "⚇ CHR""
            status_bat = "⚡ BAT"
            status_full = "☻ FULL"
            path = "/sys/class/power_supply/BAT%d/uevent"
            low_threshold = 10
    }
    run_watch DHCP {
            pidfile = "/var/run/dhclient*.pid"
    }
    run_watch VPNC {
            # file containing the PID of a vpnc process
            pidfile = "/var/run/vpnc/pid"
    }
    path_exists VPN {
            # path exists when a VPN tunnel launched by nmcli/nm-applet is active
            path = "/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/tun0"
    }
    tztime local {
            format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
    }
    tztime berlin {
            format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z"
            timezone = "Europe/Berlin"
    }
    load {
            format = "%5min"
    }
    cpu_temperature 0 {
            format = "T: %degrees °C"
            path = "/sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input"
    }
    disk "/" {
            format = "%free"
    }

  General

The colors directive will disable all colors if you set it to false. You can also specify the colors that will be used to display "good", "degraded" or "bad" values using the color_good, color_degraded or color_bad directives, respectively. Those directives are only used if color support is not disabled by the colors directive. The input format for color values is the canonical RGB hexadecimal triplet (with no separators between the colors), prefixed by a hash character ("#").

Example configuration:

    color_good = "#00FF00"

Likewise, you can use the color_separator directive to specify the color that will be used to paint the separator bar. The separator is always output in color, even when colors are disabled by the colors directive. This option has no effect when output_format is set to i3bar or none.

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 use in its output. Currently available are:

i3bar
    i3bar comes with i3 and provides a workspace bar which does the right thing in multi-monitor situations. It also comes with tray support and can display the i3status output. This output type uses JSON to pass as much meta-information to i3bar as possible (like colors, which blocks can be shortened in which way, etc.).

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

xmobar
    xmobar is a minimalistic, text based, status bar. It was designed to work with the xmonad Window Manager.

term
    Use ANSI Escape sequences to produce a terminal-output as close as possible to the graphical outputs. This makes debugging your config file a little bit easier because the terminal-output of i3status becomes much more readable, but should only used for such quick glances, because it will only support very basic output-features (for example you only get 3 bits of color depth).

none
    Does not use any color codes. Separates values by the pipe symbol by default. This should be used with i3bar and can be used for custom scripts.

It’s also possible to use the color_good, color_degraded, color_bad directives to define specific colors per module. If one of these directives is defined in a module section its value will override the value defined in the general section just for this module.

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 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.

Example configuration:

    general {
        output_format = "xmobar"
        separator = "  "
    }
    order += "load"
    order += "disk /"
    load {
        format = "[ load: %1min, %5min, %15min ]"
    }
    disk "/" {
        format = "%avail"
    }

  IPv6

This module gets the IPv6 address used for outgoing connections (that is, the best available public IPv6 address on your computer).

Example format_up: %ip

Example format_down: no IPv6

  Disk

Gets used, free, available and total amount of bytes on the given mounted filesystem.

These values can also be expressed in percentages with the percentage_used, percentage_free, percentage_avail and percentage_used_of_avail formats.

Byte sizes are presented in a human readable format using a set of prefixes whose type can be specified via the "prefix_type" option. Three sets of prefixes are available:

binary
    IEC prefixes (Ki, Mi, Gi, Ti) represent multiples of powers of 1024. This is the default.

decimal
    SI prefixes (k, M, G, T) represent multiples of powers of 1000.

custom
    The custom prefixes (K, M, G, T) represent multiples of powers of 1024.

It is possible to define a low_threshold that causes the disk text to be displayed using color_bad. The low_threshold type can be of threshold_type "bytes_free", "bytes_avail", "percentage_free", or "percentage_avail", where the former two can be prepended by a generic prefix (k, m, g, t) having prefix_type. So, if you configure low_threshold to 2, threshold_type to "gbytes_avail", and prefix_type to "binary", and the remaining available disk space is below 2 GiB, it will be colored bad. If not specified, threshold_type is assumed to be "percentage_avail" and low_threshold to be set to 0, which implies no coloring at all.

You can define a different format with the option "format_not_mounted" which is used if the path is not a mount point. So you can just empty the output for the given path with adding »format_not_mounted=""« to the config section.

Example order: disk /mnt/usbstick

Example format: %free (%avail)/ %total

Example format: %percentage_used used, %percentage_free free, %percentage_avail avail

Example prefix_type: custom

Example low_threshold: 5

Example threshold_type: percentage_free

  Run-watch

Expands the given path to a pidfile and checks if the process ID found inside is valid (that is, if the process is running). You can use this to check if a specific application, such as a VPN client or your DHCP client is running.

Example order: run_watch DHCP

Example format: %title: %status

  Path-exists

Checks if the given path exists in the filesystem. You can use this to check if something is active, like for example a VPN tunnel managed by NetworkManager.

Example order: path_exists VPN

Example format: %title: %status

  Wireless

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.

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

  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).

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)

  Battery

Gets the status (charging, discharging, running), percentage, remaining time and power consumption (in Watts) of the given battery and when it’s estimated to be empty. If you want to use the last full capacity instead of the 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.

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, 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 colored red. The low_threshold type can be of threshold_type "time" or "percentage". So, if you configure low_threshold to 10 and threshold_type to "time", and your battery lasts another 9 minutes, it will be colored red.

Optionally custom strings including any UTF-8 symbols can be used for different battery states. This makes it possible to display individual symbols for each state (charging, discharging, full) Of course it will also work with special iconic fonts, such as FontAwesome. If any of this special status strings is omitted, the default (CHR, BAT, FULL) is used.

Example order: battery 0

Example format: %status %remaining (%emptytime %consumption)

Example format_down: No battery

Example status_chr: ⚇ CHR

Example status_bat: ⚡ BAT

Example status_full: ☻ FULL

Example low_threshold: 30

Example threshold_type: time

Example path: /sys/class/power_supply/CMB1/uevent

  CPU-Temperature

Gets the temperature of the given thermal zone. It is possible to define a max_threshold that will color the temperature red in case the specified thermal zone is getting too hot. Defaults to 75 degrees C.

Example order: cpu_temperature 0

Example format: T: %degrees °C

Example max_threshold: 42

Example path: /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input

  CPU Usage

Gets the percentual CPU usage from /proc/stat (Linux) or sysctl(3) (FreeBSD/OpenBSD).

Example order: cpu_usage

Example format: %usage

  Load

Gets the system load (number of processes waiting for CPU time in the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes). It is possible to define a max_threshold that will color the load value red in case the load average of the last minute is getting higher than the configured threshold. Defaults to 5.

Example order: load

Example format: %1min %5min %15min

Example max_threshold: "0,1"

  Time

Outputs the current time in the local timezone. To use a different timezone, you can set the TZ environment variable, or use the tztime module. See strftime(3) for details on the format string.

Example order: time

Example format: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S

  TzTime

Outputs the current time in the given timezone. If no timezone is given, local time will be used. See strftime(3) for details on the format string. The system’s timezone database is usually installed in /usr/share/zoneinfo. Files below that path make for valid timezone strings, e.g. for /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin you can set timezone to Europe/Berlin in the tztime module.

Example order: tztime berlin

Example format: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z

Example timezone: Europe/Berlin

  DDate

Outputs the current discordian date in user-specified format. See ddate(1) for details on the format string. Note: Neither %. nor %X are implemented yet.

Example order: ddate

Example format: %{%a, %b %d%}, %Y%N - %H

  Volume

Outputs the volume of the specified mixer on the specified device. If compiled with USE_PULSEAUDIO, may work on any system with PulseAudio. Otherwise only ALSA is available and therefore will only work on Linux. In this case a simplified configuration can be used on FreeBSD and OpenBSD due to the lack of ALSA, the device and mixer options can be ignored on these systems. On these systems the OSS API is used instead to query /dev/mixer directly if mixer_idx is -1, otherwise /dev/mixer+mixer_idx+.

To get PulseAudio volume information, one must use the following format in the device line:

    device = "pulse"

or

    device = "pulse:N"

where N is the index of the PulseAudio sink. If no sink is specified the default is used. If the device string is missing or is set to "default", PulseAudio will be tried if detected and will fallback to ALSA (Linux) or OSS (FreeBSD/OpenBSD).

Example order: volume master

Example format: ♪: %volume Example format_muted: ♪: 0%%

Example configuration:

    volume master {
            format = "♪: %volume"
            format_muted = "♪: muted (%volume)"
            device = "default"
            mixer = "Master"
            mixer_idx = 0
    }

Example configuration (PulseAudio):

    volume master {
            format = "♪: %volume"
            format_muted = "♪: muted (%volume)"
            device = "pulse:1"
    }

UNIVERSAL MODULE OPTIONS

When using the i3bar output format, there are a few additional options that can be used with all modules to customize their appearance:

align
    The alignment policy to use when the minimum width (see below) is not reached. Either center (default), right or left.

min_width
    The minimum width (in pixels) the module should occupy. If the module takes less space than the specified size, the block will be padded to the left and/or the right side, according to the defined alignment policy. This is useful when you want to prevent the whole status line from shifting when values take more or less space between each iteration. The option can also be a string. In this case, the width of the given text determines the minimum width of the block. This is useful when you want to set a sensible minimum width regardless of which font you are using, and at what particular size. Please note that a number enclosed with quotes will still be treated as a number.

Example configuration:

    disk "/" {
        format = "%avail"
        align = "left"
        min_width = 100
    }

USING I3STATUS WITH DZEN2

After installing dzen2, you can directly use it with i3status. Just ensure that output_format is set to dzen2.

Example for usage of i3status with dzen2:

    i3status | dzen2 -fg white -ta r -w 1280 \
    -fn "-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-C-70-iso8859-1"

USING I3STATUS WITH XMOBAR

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.

Example for usage of i3status with xmobar:

    i3status | xmobar -o -t "%StdinReader%" -c "[Run StdinReader]"

WHAT ABOUT MEMORY USAGE OR CPU FREQUENCY?

While talking about two 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 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 tell you anything useful either.

In general, i3status wants to display things which you would look at occasionally anyways, like the current date/time, whether you are connected to a WiFi network or not, and if you have enough disk space to fit that 4.3 GiB 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.

EXTERNAL SCRIPTS/PROGRAMS WITH I3STATUS

In i3status, we don’t want to implement process management again. Therefore, there is no module to run arbitrary scripts or commands. Instead, you should use your shell, for example like this:

Example for prepending the i3status output:

    #!/bin/sh
    # shell script to prepend i3status with more stuff
    i3status | while :
    do
            read line
            echo "mystuff | $line" || exit 1
    done

Put that in some script, say .bin/my_i3status.sh and execute that instead of 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/contrib

SIGNALS

When receiving SIGUSR1, i3status’s nanosleep() will be interrupted and thus you will force an update. You can use killall -USR1 i3status to force an update after changing the system volume, for example.

SEE ALSO

strftime(3), date(1), glob(3), dzen2(1), xmobar(1)

AUTHORS

Michael Stapelberg and contributors

Thorsten Toepper

Baptiste Daroussin

Axel Wagner

Fernando Tarlá Cardoso Lemos