quickshell-bar

A Wayland status bar for Sway, i3, Hyprland and attwm (a dwm-like window manager for river), built with Quickshell and packaged with Nix flakes.

Modules

Left → right:

Module	Source
Workspaces	Sway/i3 IPC (`Quickshell.I3`), Hyprland IPC, or attwm tags
Layout	attwm only — layout symbol, click to cycle
Clock	local time (center)
CPU	`/proc/stat` (per-core load bars + overall %)
CPU temp	`coretemp`/`k10temp` hwmon, else thermal
RAM	`/proc/meminfo`
Disk	`df /` (every 30s)
Network	`/sys/class/net/<active>/statistics` ↓↑
Volume	PipeWire default sink (scroll/click)
Tray	StatusNotifier (`Quickshell.Services.SystemTray`)
Battery	first non-peripheral `power_supply`

System metrics are read straight from /proc and /sys in QML via FileView, polled once a second (services/SysStats.qml) — no persistent helper process and no per-tick awk/df/cat spawns. Two exceptions have no virtual-file equivalent: hardware discovery runs once at startup (services/discover.sh, locating the hwmon temp sensor and main battery), and disk usage uses df refreshed every 30s (the kernel exposes free space only via the statvfs syscall). Workspaces, volume, tray and battery icon use native Quickshell services.

Requirements

A supported window manager, detected from the environment at startup: Sway/i3 ($SWAYSOCK/$I3SOCK), Hyprland ($HYPRLAND_INSTANCE_SIGNATURE), or attwm — assumed when neither of the other two announces itself, and talking to $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/attwm-$WAYLAND_DISPLAY.sock (override with $ATTWM_SOCKET).
A running PipeWire session for the volume module.
Nix with flakes enabled (experimental-features = nix-command flakes).

Fonts (JetBrains Mono Nerd Font + Inter) are bundled into the package via FONTCONFIG_FILE, so glyphs render even if they aren't installed system-wide.

Run

# run directly from the flake
nix run .

# or build a wrapper and run it
nix build .
./result/bin/quickshell-bar

During development you can also run it without building:

nix develop          # drops you into a shell with quickshell on PATH
quickshell --path .  # or: qs -p .

Use it from Sway

Add to ~/.config/sway/config:

# hide the built-in swaybar
bar { mode invisible }

# launch the Quickshell bar (adjust the path to this repo)
exec nix run /path/to/quickshell_bar

Or, if you install the package (e.g. into your system/Home-Manager profile), just exec quickshell-bar. The bar anchors to the top edge and reserves an exclusive zone, so windows tile beneath it automatically.

Use it from attwm

attwm is started by river, so launch the bar from river's init alongside it:

#!/bin/sh
# ~/.config/river/init
quickshell-bar &
exec attwm

Tags replace workspaces: all nine are always shown, dim when empty, underlined when they hold windows you aren't looking at. Left click views a tag, right click toggles it into the view, middle click sends the focused window there. The layout symbol sits to their right — click to cycle forward, right click back. A bar can only map at all because attwm binds river_layer_shell_v1.

Configuration

Everything is plain QML — edit and the bar hot-reloads.

Colours, sizes, fonts — config/Theme.qml (Catppuccin Mocha by default).
Icons — config/Icons.qml (Nerd Font codepoints).
Poll interval — interval in services/SysStats.qml (kept in sync with the argument passed to stats.sh).
Module order / layout — widgets/Bar.qml.

Layout

shell.qml              entry point — one Bar per monitor
config/
  Theme.qml            colours, sizes, fonts (singleton)
  Icons.qml            Nerd Font glyphs (singleton)
  Compositor.qml       which window manager are we under? env only (singleton)
services/
  SysStats.qml         reads /proc & /sys via FileView into reactive props (singleton)
  Attwm.qml            attwm IPC socket: state in, commands out (singleton)
  discover.sh          one-shot hwmon/battery path discovery at startup
widgets/
  Bar.qml              the PanelWindow + layout
  Pill.qml             rounded container used by every module
  MetricPill.qml       icon + value helper
  WorkspaceChip.qml    one workspace/tag chip, shared by every backend
  Workspaces.qml  LayoutSymbol.qml  Clock.qml  CpuGraph.qml  CpuTemp.qml
  Ram.qml  Disk.qml  Network.qml  Volume.qml  Tray.qml  Battery.qml

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