instantOS

Appearance

Status bar customisation ​

instantWM displays a status bar at the bottom of each monitor. The status text is configured via the TOML configuration file.

Configuration ​

Configure the status bar by setting status_command in your config:

toml
status_command = "i3status-rs"

This spawns an external command that outputs status text. The command should write to stdout.

Default Status ​

If no status_command is configured, instantWM displays a default status showing the version and current time:

instantwm-VERSION HH:MM

The status updates every 30 seconds.

Manual Status Updates ​

You can update the status bar programmatically using instantwmctl:

bash
instantwmctl update-status "My custom status"

Or using the socket API directly.

i3bar JSON Protocol ​

instantWM uses the i3bar JSON protocol for status text. This is compatible with i3status, i3status-rs, and other i3bar-compatible programs.

The status command outputs JSON blocks:

json
[{"full_text": "CPU: 12%", "color": "#ffffff"}, {"full_text": "Memory: 4.2GiB", "color": "#ffffff"}]

Each block can include:

  • full_text - Main text to display
  • short_text - Short version for constrained spaces
  • color - Text color (hex format: "#RRGGBB")
  • background - Background color
  • border - Border color
  • border_top, border_right, border_bottom, border_left - Border widths
  • min_width - Minimum width (string or number)
  • align - Text alignment ("left", "center", "right")
  • urgent - Mark block as urgent (swaps colors)
  • separator - Show separator after block
  • separator_block_width - Width of separator
  • name - Block identifier for click events
  • instance - Block instance for click events
  • markup - Markup format ("pango")

Example i3status-rs Config ​

toml
# ~/.config/i3status-rs/config.toml
[[block]]
block = "cpu"
interval = 1

[[block]]
block = "memory"
interval = 10

[[block]]
block = "time"
format = "%H:%M"
interval = 30

Clickable Status Bar ​

You can make status blocks interactive by enabling click events in your status command.

The status command should output this header first:

json
{"version": 1, "click_events": true}

instantWM will then send click events to the status command's stdin when blocks are clicked.

Styling ​

Configure status bar colors in your TOML config under [colors.status]:

toml
[colors.status]
fg = "#DFDFDF"
bg = "#121212"
detail = "#3E485B"

Troubleshooting ​

If the status bar is not working:

  1. Check that status_command is set in your config
  2. Verify the command runs standalone
  3. Check instantWM logs for errors
  4. Try instantwmctl update-status "test" to verify basic functionality