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.
Sampleconfiguration.
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 += "memory"
order += "load"
order += "tztime local"
order += "tztime berlin"
wireless wlan0 {
format_up = "W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate) %ip"
format_down = "W: down"
}
ethernet eth0 {
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_unk = "? UNK"
status_full = "☻ FULL"
status_idle = "☻ IDLE"
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"
hide_if_equals_localtime = true
}
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"
}
memory {
format = "%used"
threshold_degraded = "10%"
format_degraded = "MEMORY: %free"
}
disk "/" {
format = "%free"
}
read_file uptime {
path = "/proc/uptime"
}
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 ("#").
Exampleconfiguration:
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 choose 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 window manager
xmobar
xmobar is a minimalistic, text based, status bar. It was designed to work with the xmonad Window
Manager.
lemonbar
lemonbar is a lightweight bar based entirely on XCB. It has full UTF-8 support and is EWMH compliant.
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 also disable the default
separator altogether by 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.
i3bar supports Pango markup, allowing your format strings to specify font, color, size, etc. by setting
the markup directive to "pango". Note that the ampersand ("&"), less-than ("<"), greater-than (">"),
single-quote ("'"), and double-quote (""") characters need to be replaced with "&", "<", ">",
"'", and """ respectively. This is done automatically for generated content (e.g. wireless
ESSID, time).
Exampleconfiguration:
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) and the interface it is assigned to.
Exampleformat_up: %iface: %ip
Exampleformat_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 customize the output format when below low_threshold with
format_below_threshold.
You can define a different format with the option "format_not_mounted" which is used if the path does not
exist or is not a mount point. Defaults to "".
Exampleorder: disk /mnt/usbstick
Exampleformat: %free (%avail)/ %total
Exampleformat: %percentage_used used, %percentage_free free, %percentage_avail avail
Exampleprefix_type: custom
Examplelow_threshold: 5
Exampleformat_below_threshold: Warning: %percentage_avail
Examplethreshold_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. There also is an option format_down. You can hide the output with format_down="".
Exampleorder: run_watch DHCP
Exampleformat: %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. There also is an option format_down. You can hide the
output with format_down="".
Exampleorder: path_exists VPN
Exampleformat: %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 quality is padded with
leading zeroes by default; to pad with something else use format_bitrate, format_noise, format_quality or
format_signal.
The special interface name _first_ will be replaced by the first wireless network interface found on the
system (excluding devices starting with "lo").
Exampleorder: wireless wlan0
Exampleformat_up: W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate / %frequency) %ip
Exampleformat_down: W: down
Exampleformat_bitrate: "%g %cb/s"
Exampleformat_noise: "%03d%s"
Exampleformat_quality: "%03d%s"
Exampleformat_signal: "%03d%s"
Ethernet
Gets the IP address and (if possible) the link speed of the given ethernet interface. If no IPv4 address
is available and an IPv6 address is, it will be displayed.
The special interface name _first_ will be replaced by the first non-wireless network interface found on
the system (excluding devices starting with "lo").
Exampleorder: ethernet eth0
Exampleformat_up: E: %ip (%speed)
Exampleformat_down: E: down
Battery
Gets the status (charging, discharging, unknown, full), 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 show seconds in the
remaining time and empty time estimations by setting hide_seconds = false.
If you want the battery percentage to be shown in another format, use format_percentage.
integer_battery_capacity = true is a legacy option for format_percentage = "%.00f%s"
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 occurrence 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 color_bad. 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 color_bad.
To show an aggregate of all batteries in the system, use "all" as the number. In this case (for Linux),
the /sys path must contain the "%d" sequence. Otherwise, the number indicates the battery index as
reported in /sys.
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, unknown, full). Of
course it will also work with special iconic fonts, such as FontAwesome. If any of these special status
strings are omitted, the default (CHR, BAT, UNK, FULL) is used.
Exampleorder(forthefirstbattery): battery 0
Exampleorder(aggregateofallbatteries): battery all
Exampleformat: %status %remaining (%emptytime %consumption)
Exampleformat_down: No battery
Exampleformat_percentage: "%.02f%s"
Examplestatus_chr: ⚡ CHR
Examplestatus_bat: 🔋 BAT
Examplestatus_unk: ? UNK
Examplestatus_full: ☻ FULL
Examplelow_threshold: 30
Examplethreshold_type: time
Examplepath(%dreplacedbytitlenumber): /sys/class/power_supply/CMB%d/uevent
Examplepath(ignoringthenumber): /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. The
output format when above max_threshold can be customized with format_above_threshold.
Exampleorder: cpu_temperature 0
Exampleformat: T: %degrees °C
Examplemax_threshold: 42
Exampleformat_above_threshold: Warning T above threshold: %degrees °C
Examplepath: /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input
CPUUsage
Gets the percentual CPU usage from /proc/stat (Linux) or sysctl(3) (FreeBSD/OpenBSD).
It is possible to define a max_threshold that will color the load value with color_bad in case the CPU
average over the last interval is getting higher than the configured threshold. Defaults to 95. The
output format when above max_threshold can be customized with format_above_threshold.
It is possible to define a degraded_threshold that will color the load value with color_degraded in case
the CPU average over the last interval is getting higher than the configured threshold. Defaults to 90.
The output format when above degraded threshold can be customized with format_above_degraded_threshold.
For displaying the Nth CPU usage, you can use the %cpu<N> format string, starting from %cpu0. This
feature is currently not supported in FreeBSD.
Exampleorder: cpu_usage
Exampleformat: all: %usage CPU_0: %cpu0 CPU_1: %cpu1
Examplemax_threshold: 75
Exampleformat_above_threshold: Warning above threshold: %usage
Exampledegraded_threshold: 25
Exampleformat_above_degraded_threshold: Warning above degraded threshold: %usage
Memory
Gets the memory usage from system on a Linux system from /proc/meminfo. Other systems are currently not
supported.
As format placeholders, total, used, free, available and shared are available. These will print human
readable values. It’s also possible to prefix the placeholders with percentage_ to get a value in
percent.
It’s possible to define a threshold_degraded and a threshold_critical to color the status bar output in
color_degraded or color_bad, if the available memory falls below the given threshold. Possible values of
the threshold can be any integer, suffixed with an iec symbol (T, G, M, K). Alternatively, the integer
can be suffixed by a percent sign, which then gets evaluated relatively to total memory.
If the format_degraded parameter is given and either the critical or the degraded threshold applies,
format_degraded will get used as format string. It acts equivalently to format.
It’s also possible to define the unit for the various format placeholders. As /proc/meminfo returns the
memory in kB they will be converted to the given unit. If no unit is given or the auto option is used,
the conversion will select the maximum possible unit.
As the converted format placeholder will be a decimal number, the number of decimals can be configured
via the decimals option. If no such option is given the converted format placeholder will have one
decimal.
As Linux' meminfo doesn’t expose the overall memory in use, there are multiple methods to distinguish the
actually used memory.
Examplememory_used_method: memavailable ("total memory" - "MemAvailable", matches free command)
Examplememory_used_method: classical ("total memory" - "free" - "buffers" - "cache", matches gnome
system monitor)
Exampleorder: memory
Exampleformat: %free %available (%used) / %total
Exampleformat: %percentage_used used, %percentage_free free, %percentage_shared shared
Exampleunit: auto, Ki, Mi, Gi, Ti
Exampledecimals: 0, 1, 2, 3
Examplethreshold_degraded: 10%
Examplethreshold_critical: 5%
Exampleformat_degraded: Memory LOW: %free
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 color_bad in case the load average of
the last minute is getting higher than the configured threshold. Defaults to 5. The output format when
above max_threshold can be customized with format_above_threshold.
Exampleorder: load
Exampleformat: %1min %5min %15min
Examplemax_threshold: "0.1"
Exampleformat_above_threshold: Warning: %1min %5min %15min
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.
Exampleorder: time
Exampleformat: %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. To override
the locale settings of your environment, set the locale option. To display time only when the set
timezone has different time from localtime, set hide_if_equals_localtime to true.
Exampleorder: tztime berlin
Exampleformat: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z
Exampletimezone: Europe/Berlin
Examplelocale: de_DE.UTF-8
If you would like to use markup in this section, there is a separate format_time option that is
automatically escaped. Its output then replaces %time in the format string.
Exampleconfiguration(markup):
tztime berlin {
format = "<span foreground='#ffffff'>time:</span> %time"
format_time = "%H:%M %Z"
timezone = "Europe/Berlin"
hide_if_equals_localtime = true
}
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.
Exampleorder: ddate
Exampleformat: %{%a, %b %d%}, %Y%N - %H
Volume
Outputs the volume of the specified mixer on the specified device. PulseAudio and ALSA (Linux only) are
supported. If PulseAudio is absent, 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 or name of the PulseAudio sink. You can obtain the name of the sink with the
following command:
$ pacmd list-sinks | grep name:
name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo>
The name is what’s inside the angle brackets, not including them. If no sink is specified the default
sink 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).
Exampleorder: volume master
Exampleformat: ♪ (%devicename): %volume
Exampleformat_muted: ♪ (%devicename): 0%%
Exampleconfiguration:
volume master {
format = "♪: %volume"
format_muted = "♪: muted (%volume)"
device = "default"
mixer = "Master"
mixer_idx = 0
}
Exampleconfiguration(PulseAudio):
volume master {
format = "♪: %volume"
format_muted = "♪: muted (%volume)"
device = "pulse:1"
}
volume master {
format = "♪: %volume"
format_muted = "♪: muted (%volume)"
device = "pulse:alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo"
}
FileContents
Outputs the contents of the specified file. You can use this to check contents of files on your system,
for example /proc/uptime. By default the function only reads the first 254 characters of the file, if you
want to override this set the Max_characters option. It will never read beyond the first 4095 characters.
If the file is not found "no file" will be printed, if the file can’t be read "error read" will be
printed.
Exampleorder: read_file UPTIME
Exampleformat: "%title: %content"
Exampleformat_bad: "%title - %errno: %error"
Examplepath: "/proc/uptime"
ExampleMax_characters: 255
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