Provided by: i3status_2.13-2_amd64 
NAME
i3status - Generates a status line for i3bar, dzen2, xmobar or lemonbar
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. ~/.config/i3status/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/i3status/config if set)
2. /etc/xdg/i3status/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/i3status/config if set)
3. ~/.i3status.conf
4. /etc/i3status.conf
DESCRIPTION
i3status is a small program for generating a status bar for i3bar, dzen2, xmobar, lemonbar 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 += "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"
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 ("#").
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 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).
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 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 "".
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 format_below_threshold: Warning: %percentage_avail
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. There also is an option "format_down". You can hide the output with
format_down="".
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. There also is an option "format_down". You can hide
the output with format_down="".
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 quality is padded with
leading zeroes by default; to pad with something else use format_quality.
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_up: W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate / %frequency) %ip
Example format_down: W: down
Example format_quality: "%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").
Example order: ethernet eth0
Example format_up: E: %ip (%speed)
Example format_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 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 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 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.
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.
Example order (for the first battery): battery 0
Example order (aggregate of all batteries): battery all
Example format: %status %remaining (%emptytime %consumption)
Example format_down: No battery
Example status_chr: ⚡ CHR
Example status_bat: 🔋 BAT
Example status_unk: ? UNK
Example status_full: ☻ FULL
Example low_threshold: 30
Example threshold_type: time
Example path (%d replaced by title number): /sys/class/power_supply/CMB%d/uevent
Example path (ignoring the number): /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.
Example order: cpu_temperature 0
Example format: T: %degrees °C
Example max_threshold: 42
Example format_above_threshold: Warning T above threshold: %degrees °C
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).
It is possible to define a max_threshold that will color the load value red 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 yellow 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.
Example order: cpu_usage
Example format: all: %usage CPU_0: %cpu0 CPU_1: %cpu1
Example max_threshold: 75
Example format_above_threshold: Warning above threshold: %usage
Example degraded_threshold: 25
Example format_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
yellow or red, 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 rets 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.
As Linux' meminfo doesn’t expose the overall memory in use, there are multiple methods to distinguish the
actually used memory.
Example memory_used_method: memavailable ("total memory" - "MemAvailable", matches free command)
Example memory_used_method: classical ("total memory" - "free" - "buffers" - "cache", matches gnome
system monitor)
Example order: memory
Example format: %free %available (%used) / %total
Example format: %percentage_used used, %percentage_free free, %percentage_shared shared
Example threshold_degraded: 10%
Example threshold_critical: 5%
Example format_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 red 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.
Example order: load
Example format: %1min %5min %15min
Example max_threshold: "0.1"
Example format_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.
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. 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.
Example order: tztime berlin
Example format: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z
Example timezone: Europe/Berlin
Example locale: 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.
Example configuration (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.
Example order: ddate
Example format: %{%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).
Example order: volume master
Example format: ♪ (%devicename): %volume
Example format_muted: ♪ (%devicename): 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"
}
volume master {
format = "♪: %volume"
format_muted = "♪: muted (%volume)"
device = "pulse:alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo"
}
File Contents
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.
Example order: read_file UPTIME
Example format: "%title: %content"
Example format_bad: "%title - %errno: %error"
Example path: "/proc/uptime"
Example Max_characters: 255
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.
separator
A boolean value which specifies whether a separator line should be drawn after this block. The
default is true, meaning the separator line will be drawn. Note that if you disable the separator
line, there will still be a gap after the block, unless you also use separator_block_width.
separator_block_width
The amount of pixels to leave blank after the block. In the middle of this gap, a separator symbol
will be drawn unless separator is disabled. This is why the specified width should leave enough space
for the separator symbol.
Example configuration:
disk "/" {
format = "%avail"
align = "left"
min_width = 100
separator = false
separator_block_width = 1
}
USING I3STATUS WITH DZEN2
After installing dzen2, you can directly use it with i3status. Just ensure that output_format is set to
dzen2. Note: min_width is not supported.
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. Note: min_width is not supported.
Example for usage of i3status with xmobar:
i3status | xmobar -o -t "%StdinReader%" -c "[Run StdinReader]"
WHAT ABOUT CPU FREQUENCY?
While talking about specific things, please understand this section as a general explanation why your
favorite information is not included in i3status.
Let’s talk about CPU frequency specifically. 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, you are probably
better off with a script doing that, which pops up. 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
https://github.com/i3/i3status/tree/master/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