gBar/README.md

gBar

My personal blazingly fast and efficient status bar + widgets, in case anyone finds a use for it.

Prerequisites

If you don't have the optional dependencies, some features are not available and you must manually disable them.

• wayland
• Hyprland(Optional -> For workspaces widget)
• nvidia-utils(Optional -> For GPU status)
• bluez(Optional -> For Bluetooth status)
• GTK 3.0
• gtk-layer-shell
• PulseAudio server (PipeWire works too!)
• meson, gcc/clang, ninja

Building and installation

1. Configure with meson

   All optional dependencies enabled

   meson build --buildtype=release
   

   All optional dependencies are disabled

   meson build --buildtype=release -DHasHyprland=false -DHasNvidia=false -DHasBlueZ=false
   

2. Build and install

   ninja -C build && sudo ninja -C build install
   

3. Copy css styling into your config directory($XDG_CONFIG_HOME). This will most likely be ~/.config

   mkdir ~/.config/gBar && cp css/* ~/.config/gBar/
   

Running gBar

Open bar on monitor 0

gBar bar 0

Open audio flyin (either on current monitor or on the specified monitor)

gBar audio [monitor]

Gallery

Bar with default css

Audio widget with default css

Features / Widgets

Bar:

• Workspaces (Hyprland only)
• Time
• Bluetooth (BlueZ only)
• Audio control
• Power control
  • Shutdown
  • Restart
  • Suspend
  • Lock (Requires manual setup, see FAQ)
  • Exit/Logout (Hyprland only)
• CPU stats: Utilisation, temperature (Temperature requires manual setup, see FAQ)
• RAM: Utilisation
• GPU stats (Nvidia only): Utilisation, temperature, VRAM
• Disk: Free/Total

Audio Flyin:

• Audio control

FAQ

There are already many GTK bars out there, why not use them?

• Waybar: Great performance, though limited styling(Almost no dynamic sliders, revealers, ...) and (at least for me) buggy css.
• eww: Really solid project with many great customization options. There is one problem though: Performance Due to the way eww configuration is set up, for each dynamic variable (the number of them quickly grows) you need a shell command which opens a process. This became quickly a bottleneck, where the bar took up 10% of the CPU-time due to the creation of many processes all the time (without even considering the workspace widget). gBar implements all of the information gathering(CPU, RAM, GPU, Disk, ...) in native C++ code, which is WAY faster. In fact, gBar was meant to be a fast replacement/alternative for eww for me.

And lastly: Implementing it myself is fun and a great excuse to learn something new!

What scheme are you using?

The colors are from the Dracula theme: https://draculatheme.com

I want to customize the colors

If you have SASS installed: Edit ~/.config/gBar/style.scss and regenerate style.css with it

Else: Edit ~/.config/gBar/style.css directly!

I want to modify the widgets behaviour/Add my own widgets

Unfortunately, you need to implement it yourself in C++. For inspiration look into src/Bar.cpp or src/AudioFlyin.cpp, or open an issue(Maybe I'll implement it for you).

The Audio widget doesn't open

Delete /tmp/gBar__audio. This happens, when you kill the widget before it closes automatically after a few seconds.

CPU Temperature is wrong/Lock doesn't work

This is caused by the way my system and/or Linux is setup.

Temperature: Edit the variable tempFilePath in src/System.cpp to the correct thermal zone file and recompile. The one for my system is very likely wrong.

Lock: There is no generic way to lock a system. So please, implement it to suit your needs (Replace XXX by a shell command in src/System.cpp)

The icons are not showing!

Please install a Nerd Font from https://www.nerdfonts.com (I use Caskaydia Cove NF), and change style.css/style.scss accordingly (Refer to 'I want to customize the colors' for that)