Coding

beautify i3wm

Motivation

I enjoy using i3wm, big time. You can switch to different windows/apps conveniently with it. The only problem to me is that it’s not beautiful enough, and it’s ridiculously small in my high-resolution screen. So I decided to change it a little bit.

Effect

Here is what you would get after applying the method.

i3wm screenshot

Method

To change the appearance, you only need to modify the config file, usually it’s ~/.config/i3/config. Add the following lines.

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font pango:nimbus sans 18
bar {
  status_command conky -c $HOME/.i3/conky/conkyrc
  mode dock
  position top
  strip_workspace_numbers yes
  colors {
    background #F1F2F6
    statusline #788491
    separator #51c4d4

    focused_workspace  #F1F2F6 #F1F2F6 #4FC0E8
    active_workspace   #F1F2F6 #F1F2F6 #4FC0E8
    inactive_workspace #F1F2F6 #F1F2F6 #C1D1E0
    urgent_workspace   #F1F2F6 #F1F2F6 #C1D1E0
  }
}

Remove those lines.

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font pango:DejaVu Sans Mono 10 (Or whatever the font is)
bar {
        status_command i3status
}

Then install conky and font-awesome, create a new file ~/.i3/conky/conkyrc, put the following lines in it.

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###    lovelybacon.deviantart.com   ####

background no
out_to_x no
out_to_console yes
update_interval 1
total_run_times 0
use_spacer none


TEXT
${exec acpi -b | awk "{print $1}" | sed 's/\([^:]*\): \([^,]*\), \([0-9]*\)%.*/\3/'}% \
${exec acpi -b | awk "{print $1}" | sed 's/\([^:]*\): \([^,]*\), \([0-9]*\)%.*/\2/'} \
${if_mpd_playing}${mpd_artist}${mpd_title}${endif}     \
   ${downspeedf wlp3s0} | ${upspeedf wlp3s0}     \
  ${wireless_link_qual_perc wlp3s0}  ${wireless_essid wlp3s0}     \
   ${hwmon 2 temp 1} | ${hwmon 2 temp 3}     \
  ${exec amixer get Master -c 0 -M | grep -oE "[[:digit:]]*%"}     \
  ${time %a %b %d}     \
  ${time %H:%M}

Restart i3, the shortcut of mine is Shift+$mod+r, $mod could either be Alt or Super key.

Note that if spaces are not recognized, install awesome-terminal-fonts and restart.

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pacaur -S awesome-terminal-fonts

Credit

The above contents are from lovelybacon.deviantart.com, thanks for your amazing work. I only did a few modifications.

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