Making a DWM Status Bar and Adding the Bling

Lets face it, all of us like our distro of choice to look good. And when it comes to a standalone window manager like DWM, a big part of the look and feel is the status bar.
I don't know why, but since trying and playing with various tiling window managers, the status bar seems to be what takes me the longest to configure.
So in this video I run through the process I've followed over the last few weeks in DWM.
I start by talking about the development of my collection of scripts (largely borrowed) before moving on to talk about how to get a bit of colour on the bar, dwmblocks, a single script, etc, etc.
I hope you enjoy the video.
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[@DannyMexen9]

Out of town for work but when I get home, this is what I'll be doing. My status bar is nice, clean and minimal but it could look better. Thanks for a great video.

[@saeidsaati4021]

Thank you so much for this clear and complete explanation.

[@OldTechBloke]

You're very welcome!

[@ScottSteely]

Great video. Let me just say, I can only hope I have your passion for Linux when I'm 60. Although I've been using Linux in one form or another for close to 20 years, I've recently ditched windows on my main pc for arch, and it's reinvigorated my love for computers. Love what your doing OTB and you're inspiring the rest of us FOSS enthusiasts to keep at it!

[@OldTechBloke]

Cheers Scott

[@thecashewtrader3328]

Wow

[@oalfodr]

I like dwmblocks in monochrome. Consider trying out dwmblocks in future again. I stole most of it from Luke and it works well with his scripts. Having ability to click on items in the status may be a useful feature.

[@andrewpalm2103]

Thanks for another very informative video, OTB! Indeed, my experience with tilers is also that the status bar is the trickiest to configure (e.g., Herbstluft using a bash dzen2 script and stalonetray). I learned a lot, but that particular aspect of setting them up was one of the reasons I eventually went back to Xfce. And then I committed the worst of sins and installed the Gnome shell. My panel setup now consists of installing Dash-to-Panel and a couple of other shell extensions. I must confess there is something satisfying about using the DE that all the Linux Kool Kids hate. ;->

[@mooski07]

Very nice. The next thing to do of course is change the emoji based on conditions, e.g. snowflake for cold. A red disk icon for low space. Haha.

[@mlong5666]

Hi OTB, I do a bit of coding but not with dwm. I noticed a possible an error in your dwblocks configuration. The last comma before your final brace likely shouldn't be included. The line with the {"", "dwmclock", 60, 0}, should be {"", "dwmclock", 60, 0} (no trailing comma). All the lines above it need a trailing comma but the last configuration line does not.

[@OldTechBloke]

Ah ha, thanks mate, I’ll test it out

[@doomsdaymachiene91]

cool boomer t-shirt

[@philippscheibe596]

You can try the status2d-patch for the coloring. Also you can look in the torrinfal/dwmblocks GitHub repo, there ist an issue and a solution to the random-signal problem

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks mate, I'll take a look

[@moonbasealphagrays4918]

Interesting video. The status bar is a pain on most WM's for sure! Lol I like to use the word "Appropriate" , Stealing is a bit of a harsh word. Nevertheless the end results is the object or the stealthy operation of acquiring what is needed to get it done... :- ) Yes Google is you friend, it is also a butt biter too! Getting it to understand what you want sometimes is a bit like getting the X-Wife to understand why she is a X... Lol Thanks OTB for the video and all the explanations. I am sure it will help others. On my SpectrWM I just decided to use a Conky for all the same stuff, no colors. Ya it is black and white but MX and Peppermint doesn't have the newer SpectrWM in the repos. :-( I may have to compile it from scratch if I want color's or Not... :-D LLAP

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

I'm also MoonBaseAlpha Grays over at "Switch To Linux's" channel and for got to change accounts... I'm so dense at times... Lol

[@apigsharbo1249]

I use slstatus from suckless as status bar, although it doesn't have per script update interval. Then again i only display brightness, volume and time.

[@motif5775]

Awesome video, thank you. May I ask what background you are using and where you got it from? It looks phenomenal.

[@OldTechBloke]

Chances are I borrowed it from distrotubes gitlab repo. Everything is just numbered in my wallpaper folder so no specific name

[@grapesalt]

I just use the slstatus program. It's a very lesser known suckless program

[@_The_God_King_]

Oh facts, I cannot code from scratch but i can read manuals and watch videos all day until i figure out how to do what i want

[@BernardoHenriquez]

In Gnu/Linux world all you need is IMAGINATION, and you will get what you want :)

[@jajajajahahahahaja]

You should make a complete xmobar video there aren't many going over it :)

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks Jacob, that's not a bad idea at all

[@mrskilz4thrilz]

use the other color statusbar patch

[@peasantrobot]

What can I say.... the memory consumption is similar with xfce4 in a regular day of work. I can specify what services to start and I keep it minimal. If is too much, I switch to openbox with all the tools needed to replicate the functionality of a normal desktop. But for tutorials and when promoting Linux to newbies, I can't ditch the Cinnamon.

[@jaredsouthern3159]

*disfuctionality

[@MrRenanwill]

I am not sure if read the output or actually generate the output is better.

[@ohmygod3516]

I am using dwm 6.2 and I have trouble getting that status color patch to work, so before I investigate further, could you please tell me which of the patches versions you have applied?

[@OldTechBloke]

I tried the status color patch and the status2d patch and I couldn’t get either of them to work properly. In the end I just installed libxft-bgra from the aur and used coloured emojis. I had to make a change to dwm.c based on a video Luke Smith did about displaying color emojis in dwm but after that everything worked

[@OldTechBloke]

I’m using 6.2 as well and all the other patches I installed worked fine but status colours was just slowing my machine to a crawl so I gave up on it

[@wobble_cat]

If you save the weather data into tempfs directory you can make things faster

[@DanielSuriol]

Great video. I have a problem and I can't copy the icons from the font awesome page to the file with vim. It does not keep me copying. How it is performed?

[@OldTechBloke]

make sure you have the font installed on your machine and then try something like geany

[@ahmadshahzad3382]

sudo pacman -S ttf-font-awesome Restart your terminal or gvim (if that's what floats your boat) Copy icon from font awesome site using CTRL+C Paste in terminal using CTRL+SHIFT+V I don't know how to paste stuff in gvim cause I never used that but I assume C+S+V would work, or CTRL+V would do the job.

[@markscheck]

Absolutely love the video!! I'm actually putting covid numbers on mine, also what do you use to record videos? Do you use a Linux based solution?

[@OldTechBloke]

Yes I do! I use obs studio and shotcut

[@tutututu81]

Just out of curiosity, why do you need to constantly know the CPU, memory, and temperature ?

[@taidee]

SatoChan for me, it is helpful information when I launch an app so that I can see how much load it puts on my system. My PC is old hardware, so if an app turns out system resource heavy, then I can look at a lighter alternative.

[@OldTechBloke]

Bling 😁

[@LDWilliams]

Well done for finding ⛅ 🖥️ 🧠 ⬆️ ⬇️ 💾 🛠️ 🌡 I've just found emoji picker on Manjaro as you can see, lol

[@TheB3n0]

Your dwmblocks was crashing because you had same update signal across all of them, and it really don't like that. Even if you don't really use them, you should set them differently for each one. Mixed update signals, even with just 2 modules can give dwmblocks a headache

[@OldTechBloke]

Yes I realised that after some fiddling. However I’ve settled now on my simple script instead

[@tic-tech-toe5394]

can you provide those scripts?

[@OldTechBloke]

All on my gitlab page

[@tic-tech-toe5394]

@@OldTechBloke yeah got it