istat: an i3 (or sway) status_command

I used to use i3blocks for i3's status_command, but I found that having all my configuration in separate scripts was getting a little cumbersome.

That, and also I could never find a good block for volume control that wasn't janky or slow.

So, I decided to write my own status_command generator, and what better language to write it in than Rust!

• istat: an i3 (or sway) status_command
  • Features
    • Screenshots
  • Install
  • Usage
    • Setting it up
    • Interacting with istat
      • Signals
      • Custom IPC events
  • Development

Features

• completely single threaded
  • less resource usage - it's a status command, it shouldn't be heavy
• ipc control
  • send click events via a command
  • refresh items with a command
  • custom events for some integrations (e.g., controlling PulseAudio, etc)
• many different bar items (continue reading for screenshots)

Each bar item is configurable, see the sample config for options.

Screenshots

Here's an image of a bar in i3:

This table contains screenshots of some bar items:

item	description	screenshots
battery	Percentage, charging, etc. Supports multiple batteries.
cpu	Usage expressed as a percentage
disk	Usage, shows free disk space
dunst	Displays "do not disturb" status (if it's paused or not)
kbd	Displays CapsLock/Numlock/etc states
krb	Checks if a valid kerberos token exists (like klist -s)
mem	Display free memory as bytes or as a percentage
net_speed	Upload and download statistics
nic	Network interface status - connection state and ip addresses
pulse	Input/output volume status, control and connected speaker type
script	Run arbitrary scripts and show their output
sensors	Temperature sensors
time	Displays the current date and/or time

Install

With Rust (via cargo):

cargo install istat
# Make sure to look at the `sample_config.toml` file for configuration options

Via the AUR (Arch Linux):

paru -S istat

Usage

Setting it up

First, create a config file for istat. View the sample config for what's available. This file should be placed in:

• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/istat/<here>, or
• $HOME/.config/istat/<here>

Even though the sample configuration file is a TOML file, YAML and JSON are also supported.

Then, update your i3/sway config to use istat as the status_command:

bar {
        status_command istat
        # ... other config
}

Interacting with istat

istat offers multiple ways of interacting with it:

• standard click events from i3/sway
• real-time signals
• it's own ipc

Signals

Consider the following bar item which outputs the state of the CapsLock and NumLock keys:

type = "kbd"
show = ["caps_lock", "num_lock"]
interval = "30s"

It refreshes every 30 seconds, or every time the bar item receives a click event. That's alright, but we can do better with signals. Adding signal = 8 to the config, and removing interval we get:

type = "kbd"
show = ["caps_lock", "num_lock"]
signal = 8

Now, whenever istat receive the SIGRTMIN+8 signal, the bar item will be refreshed. Pair this with the following config in i3/sway, and you'll have a bar item that reflects your keys all the time:

bindsym --release Caps_Lock exec --no-startup-id pkill -RTMIN+8 istat
bindsym --release Num_Lock  exec --no-startup-id pkill -RTMIN+8 istat

Linux offers many realtime signals, to see which your machine supports the istat-signals command is provided:

$ istat-signals
{"max":30,"min":0,"sigrtmax":64,"sigrtmin":34}

The same signal can be configured for multiple bar items, too!

Custom IPC events

The command istat-ipc is provided to interface with istat. It supports:

• fetching the name and index of all the currently running bar items
• refreshing all bar items at once
• sending click events to each bar item
• sending custom events to bar items
  • some bar items (like pulse) expose an advanced API which can be accessed with these events

Refresh all bar items at once:

istat-ipc refresh-all

Send a click event to a bar item - without actually clicking it!:

# emulate a left click on the disk item:
istat-ipc click disk left

Control PulseAudio/Pipewire via custom IPC events:

# see all the custom events that pulse has to offer:
istat-ipc custom pulse

# Some examples:

# turn the output (speakers) volume up
istat-ipc custom pulse volume-down sink
# turn the input (microphone) volume down
istat-ipc custom pulse volume-up   source
# mute or unmute the output
istat-ipc custom pulse mute-toggle sink

Development

See the justfile!