CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file. Each release should have the following subsections, if entries exist, in the given order: Breaking, Build, Deprecated, Removed, Added, Changed, Fixed, Security.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

Unreleased

Breaking

• We added the backslash escape character (\) for configuration values. This means that the literal backslash character now has special meaning in configuration files, therefore if you want to use it in a value as a literal backslash, you need to escape it with the backslash escape character. The parser logs an error if any unescaped backslashes are found in a value. This affects you only if you are using two consecutive backslashes in a value, which will now be interpreted as a single literal backslash. #2354
• We rewrote our tag parser. This shouldn't break anything, if you experience any problems, please let us know. The new parser now gives errors for certain invalid tags where the old parser would just silently ignore them. Adding extra text to the end of a valid tag now produces an error. For example, tags like %{T-a}, %{T2abc}, %{rfoo}, and others will now start producing errors. This does not affect you unless you are producing your own formatting tags (for example in a script) and you are using one of these invalid tags.

Build

• New dependency: libuv. At least version 1.3 is required.
• Bump the minimum cmake version to 3.5
• The BUILD_IPC_MSG option has been renamed to BUILD_POLYBAR_MSG
• Building the documentation is now enabled by default and not just when sphinx-build is found.
• Users can control exactly which targets should be available with the following cmake options (together with their default value):
  • BUILD_POLYBAR=ON - Builds the polybar executable
  • BUILD_POLYBAR_MSG=ON - Builds the polybar-msg executable
  • BUILD_TESTS=OFF - Builds the test suite
  • BUILD_DOC=ON - Builds the documentation
  • BUILD_DOC_HTML=BUILD_DOC - Builds the html documentation (depends on BUILD_DOC)
  • BUILD_DOC_MAN=BUILD_DOC - Builds the manpages (depends on BUILD_DOC)
  • BUILD_CONFIG=ON - Generates the default config
  • BUILD_SHELL=ON - Generates shell completion files
  • DISABLE_ALL=OFF - Disables all above targets by default. Individual targets can still be enabled explicitly.
• The documentation can no longer be built by directly configuring the doc directory.
• The sample config file is now placed in the generated-sources folder inside whatever folder you invoked cmake from instead of in the root folder of the repository.
• The POLYBAR_FLAGS cmake variable can be used to pass extra C++ compiler flags.
• The sample config file has been removed.
• Polybar now ships a default config that is installed to /etc/polybar/config.ini, it lives in doc/config.ini. It will also be placed in the examples directory in the documentation folder. #2405
• The userconfig target has been removed, you can no longer use make userconfig. As an alternative, you can copy the default config from /etc/polybar/config.ini.

Deprecated

• [settings]: throttle-output and throttle-output-for have been removed. The new event loop already does a similar thing where it coalesces update triggers if they happen directly after one another, leading to only a single bar update.
• When not specifying the config file with --config, naming your config file config is deprecated. Rename your config file to config.ini.

Removed

• DEBUG_SHADED cmake variable and its associated functionality.

Added

• Polybar can now read config files from stdin: polybar -c /dev/stdin.
• custom/script: Implement env-* config option. (2090)
• drawtypes/ramp: Add support for ramp weights. (1750)
• internal/memory: New tokens %used%, %free%, %total%, %swap_total%, %swap_free%, and %swap_used% that automatically switch between MiB and GiB when below or above 1GiB. (2472)
• Option to always show urgent windows in i3 module when pin-workspace is active (2374)
• internal/xworkspaces: reverse-scroll can be used to reverse the scroll direction when cycling through desktops.
• The backslash escape character (\). #2354
• Warn states for the cpu, memory, fs, and battery modules. (#570, #956, #1871, #2141)
  • internal/battery: format-low, label-low, animation-low, low-at = 10.
  • internal/cpu: format-warn, label-warn, warn-percentage = 80
  • internal/fs: format-warn, label-warn, warn-percentage = 90
  • internal/memory: format-warn, label-warn, warn-percentage = 90
• radius now affects the bar border as well (#1566)
• Per-corner corner radius with radius-{bottom,top}-{left,right} (#2294)
• internal/network: speed-unit = B/s can be used to customize how network speeds are displayed.
• internal/xkeyboard: %variant% can be used to parse the layout variant (#316)
• Config option to hide a certain module (hidden = false) (#2108)
• Actions to control visibility of modules (module_toggle, module_show, and module_hide) (#2108)
• internal/xworkspaces: Make the urgent hint persistent (#1081)
• internal/network: interface-type may be used in place of interface to automatically select a network interface (#2025)
• internal/xworkspaces: %nwin% can be used to display the number of open windows per workspace (#604)
• internal/backlight: added use-actual-brightness option
• Added wm-restack = generic option that lowers polybar to the bottom of the stack. Fixes the issue where the bar is being drawn on top of fullscreen windows in xmonad. (#2205)
• Added occupied-scroll = true option to bspwm module. Allows scrolling only through occupied desktops only. (#2427)
• custom/ipc: send action to send arbitrary strings to be displayed in the module. (#2455)
• Added double-click-interval setting to the bar section to control the time interval in which a double-click is recognized. Defaults to 400 (ms) (#1441)
• internal/xkeyboard: Allow configuring icons using variant (#2414)
• custom/ipc: Add hook, next, prev, reset actions to the ipc module (#2464)
• Added a new tray-foreground setting to give hints to tray icons about what color they should be. (#2235)

Changed

• Polybar now also reads config.ini when searching for config files. (#2323)
• Polybar additionally searches in XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/polybar (or /etc/xdg/polybar if it is not set) and /etc/polybar for config files (only config.ini). (#2016)
• We rewrote polybar's main event loop. This shouldn't change any behavior for the user, but be on the lookout for X events, click events, or ipc messages not arriving and the bar not shutting down/restarting properly and let us know if you find any issues.
• Slight changes to the value ranges the different ramp levels are responsible for in the cpu, memory, fs, and battery modules. The first and last level are only used for everything at or below and at and above the edges of the value range, respectively. The other levels are evenly distributed over the value range as before.
• custom/script: interval now defaults to 0 if tail = true as per the documentation.
• internal/network:
  • Increased precision for upload and download speeds: 0 decimal places for KB/s (as before), 1 for MB/s and 2 for GB/s.
• Clicks arriving in close succession, no longer get dropped. Before polybar would drop any click that arrived within 5ms of the previous one.
• Increased the double click interval from 150ms to 400ms.
• Stop ignoring actions if they arrive while the previous one hasn't been processed yet. (#2469)
• Polybar can now be run without passing the bar name as argument given that the configuration file only defines one bar (#2525)
• include-directory and include-file now support relative paths. The paths are relative to the folder of the file where those directives appear. (#2523)
• custom/ipc: Empty output strings are no longer formatted. This prevents extraneous spaces and separators from appearing in the bar when the output of an ipc module is empty.

Fixed

• custom/script: Concurrency issues with fast-updating tailed scripts. (#1978)
• Trailing space after the layout label when indicators are empty and made sure right amount of spacing is added between the indicator labels, in the xkeyboard module. (#2292)
• Parser error if click command contained } (#2040)
• Slight imprecision when calculating percentages. This caused the volume reported by alsa to be off by one. (#2399)
• internal/backlight: With amdgpu backlights, the brightness indicator was slightly behind. (#2367)
• Warning message regarding T@ in bspwm module (#2371)
• polybar -m used to show both physical outputs and randr monitors, even if the outputs were covered by monitors. (#2481)
• internal/xworkspaces:
  • Broken scroll-wrapping and order of workspaces when scrolling (#2491)
  • Module would error if WM was not full started up. (#1915)
• internal/network: The module now properly supports 'altnames' for interfaces.

3.5.7 - 2021-09-21

Fixed

• The tray mistakenly removed tray icons that did not support XEMBED (#2479, #2442)
• custom/ipc: Only the first appearance of the %pid% token was replaced (#2500)

3.5.6 - 2021-05-24

Build

• Support building documentation on sphinx 4.0 (#2424)

Fixed

• Tray icons sometimes appears outside of bar (#2430, #1679)
• Crash in the i3 module (#2416)

3.5.5 - 2021-03-01

Build

• Support older python sphinx versions again (#2356)

3.5.4 - 2021-01-07

Fixed

• Wrong text displayed if module text ends with } (#2331)

3.5.3 - 2020-12-23

Build

• Don't use git when building documentation (#2309)

Fixed

• Empty color values are no longer treated as invalid and no longer produce an error.