winbar

A Windows 10/11 Status Bar.

winbar is quite different from other status bars in that it provides more straightforward configuration. What this means is that you spend less time configuring the status bar, and have something that just works and generally looks good.

Of course, you can still change colours and formats of components (available configuration depends on the component), but you wouldn't be able to change every little detail about how the component is displayed.

How does it work?

winbar is divided into two components: the CLI (winbarc) and the actual status bar app itself (winbar). The CLI can be used to control winbar.

winbar (the app) runs a TCP server for clients to connect to (in this case, just winbarc). It uses a simple JSON-based request-response protocol. If you're curious/want to make your own client, see protocol.rs.

Components

Components are an individual block within the status bar displaying some specific thing. For example, the datetime component, as the name suggests, displays the current date and time within the status bar.

Available Components

The following components are available natively by winbar:

• Static Text - displays some static text
• DateTime - displays the current date/time

Configuration

See Configuration.

Downloading / Installing

winbar and winbarc can be downloaded from Releases. There currently isn't a convenient installation process, so for now, winbar and winbarc can be put in any location as long as it's in your PATH.

If you wish to download the latest main branch build, you can download the artifacts from the latest GitHub Action run.

Usage

Once you have downloaded winbar and winbarc and it exists in your PATH, you will need to create or generate the config. There is an example config you can download, or run the following command:

winbar --config-path <PATH> --generate-config

This will generate an example config in the given path.

To start winbar, you can either run winbar directly:

winbar --config-path <PATH>

or, use winbarc to start winbar and run it in the background:

winbarc start --config-path <PATH>

To stop winbar, run:

winbarc stop

That's the gist of it! There are more commands and options available that you can specify. Feel free to use the --help option on any command (winbar, winbarc) or subcommand to see everything available to you.

Compiling from source

Clone this repo and change into the project's directory. You can then compile using the following command:

cargo build [--release]

If you want to install winbar and winbarc, run the following commands with the respective project:

cargo install --path <./winbar | ./winbarc>

A note on developing

For an unknown reason, winbarc does not properly start winbar if winbarc is run using cargo run (in the default debug mode). If you wish to use winbarc to start winbar, make sure to either run it in release mode (cargo run --release) or install it using cargo install (also in release mode, but that is the default).

Roadmap

• More configuration options for existing components
• New components
• Multi-monitor support
• Plugin system

Credits

This project's layout and bits of code are inspired from the following:

• komorebi

  • This project's high-level architecture is very similar to that of komorebi (separating CLI/actual status bar)
  • The window creation/drawing code structure in winbar was inspired by komorebi

• gdiplus-rs

  • winbar's GDI+ setup and usage was greatly inspired by gdiplus-rs