mangobar

A Wayland status bar for mangowm, built on wlr-layer-shell. The system tray (StatusNotifierItem / DBusMenu) is inspired by swaybar and waybar.

Install

Dependencies

Build tools: meson, ninja, wayland-scanner (part of wayland), pkg-config.

Libraries:

• cjson
• wayland
• wayland-protocols
• fcft
• tllist
• pixman
• cairo
• pango
• libpulse
• systemd-libs
• gdk-pixbuf2
• alsa-lib

Arch:

sudo pacman -S --needed meson ninja cjson wayland wayland-protocols \
  fcft tllist pixman cairo pango libpulse systemd-libs gdk-pixbuf2 alsa-lib

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install meson ninja-build libcjson-dev libwayland-dev \
  wayland-protocols libfcft-dev libpixman-1-dev libcairo2-dev \
  libpango1.0-dev libpulse-dev libtllist-dev libsystemd-dev libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-dev \
  libasound2-dev pkg-config

Build

git clone https://github.com/mangowm/mangobar.git
cd mangobar
meson setup build -Dprefix=/usr
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install

If meson.build changes after a git pull, ninja re-runs meson automatically; install any newly added dependencies first.

Runtime note: pamixer / brightnessctl are only needed if your config's click/scroll actions call them.

Nix

Build the package locally with:

nix build .#mangobar
./result/bin/mangobar

Home Manager

The flake exports a Home Manager module. Add it to your flake inputs and enable the user service:

{
  imports = [ inputs.mangobar.homeManagerModules.default ];

  services.mangobar = {
    enable = true;
    systemdTarget = "mango.target";
  };
}

The service starts with graphical-session.target by default. Set systemdTarget to your compositor's user target, such as mango.target. Override services.mangobar.package to use a different mangobar derivation.

Set services.mangobar.settings to generate ~/.config/mangobar/config.jsonc from a Nix attribute set, or use services.mangobar.configFile for an existing JSONC file. These options are mutually exclusive. Changing either configuration restarts the service during Home Manager activation; rebuilding the mangobar package does as well.

services.mangobar.settings = {
  modules-left = [ "workspaces" "layout" "window" ];
  modules-right = [ "cpu" "memory" "clock#time" ];
};

Usage

Run mangobar inside a mangowm session. It reads configuration from:

1. $MANGOBAR_CONFIG
2. ~/.config/mangobar/config.jsonc

The JSONC config supports height, layer, buffer-scale, css (or style), and per-module format, interval, on-click, on-scroll-* etc. Unsupported modules are ignored. All runtime settings come from JSONC and CSS; fonts are set in CSS only (font-family, font-size, font-weight). See config.jsonc for a complete example. Any module can be placed in modules-left, modules-center or modules-right; left is anchored to the left edge, right to the right edge and center is centered between them.

scroll-interval (ms, default 0 = disabled) debounces scroll actions per module: repeated scrolls inside the interval keep resetting the timer, so a continuous scroll only triggers once. It can be set at the top level or in a module block ("workspaces": { ..., "scroll-interval": 100 }), where the module value wins.

smooth-scrolling-threshold controls how much continuous pointer-axis motion (such as a touchpad two-finger gesture) produces one scroll action. It defaults to 5.0. Mangobar accumulates motion independently for horizontal and vertical axes, preserving any amount below the threshold for the next frame. Discrete mouse-wheel steps continue to use their protocol-provided step count. Set it at the top level for all modules, or in a module block (as in Waybar) to override that module:

"backlight": { "smooth-scrolling-threshold": 5.0 }

Every module accepts "max-length" (in characters, 0 = unlimited, the default for all modules). The window module is squeezed by the other modules when no limit is set: it shows fully up to the remaining bar width, or up to "max-length" when configured. Truncated text gets a ... suffix.

buffer-scale is a multiplier on top of the output's Wayland scale (default 1); leave it at 1 to follow the display's HiDPI scale automatically. Text, icons and menus are rendered at the effective scale so they stay sharp.

Any module with a format can also set format-alt; a left click toggles between the two formats (the module's on-click command still runs if configured). The network module additionally supports {down} / {up} in its format strings, e.g. "format-alt": "↓{down} ↑{up}" for live speeds.

CSS priority is $MANGOBAR_CSS > ~/.config/mangobar/style.css.

Modules

• tags / layout / title / keymode / keyboardlayout: from mangowm IPC (workspaces also accepts pinned — tag numbers kept visible even when empty — and tag-names, an array of custom labels, index 0 = tag 1)
• cpu: {usage} is the CPU usage percent and {load} is the 1-minute load average (two decimals); mem reads /proc
• brightness: read /sys/class/backlight (auto-detected or the JSONC device field); updates immediately on external changes via udev
• volume: read via the PulseAudio library, with ALSA fallback; shows mute state and updates immediately on external changes via PulseAudio events
• clock: time (#clock) and date (#clock.date) with separate CSS; date names follow the system locale (e.g. Chinese month/weekday names)
• network: shows the active interface name; click toggles up/down speeds (KB/s below 1MB/s, MB/s otherwise)
• hideclients: shows the hidden-window count for the monitor; the module hides itself while the count is zero
• battery: charge percent and status ({percent}, {status}, {icon}); "icons" is an array of nerd-font icons shown by charge level while discharging, icon-charging / icon-full override the charging/full states, and {ac} / icon-ac mark a plugged-in adapter; "hide-on-ac": true hides the module entirely while plugged in
• brightness / volume: "icons" arrays switch the {icon} by level (e.g. ["󰃚", "󰃛", "󰃜", "󰃝", "󰃞", "󰃟"]); volume also has icon-muted and {bt} / icon-bluetooth to show a bluetooth mark when the active sink is a bluetooth device
• tray: StatusNotifierItem / DBusMenu, with a side-opening submenu
• custom/<name>: user-defined modules (see below)

Custom modules

Add custom/<name> to modules-left or modules-right and define it in the same JSONC file:

"custom/power": {
    "format": "󰣇",
    "on-click": "wlogout",
    "on-click-right": "swaync-client -t -sw"
},
"custom/uptime": {
    "exec": "uptime -p | sed 's/^up //'",
    "interval": 60,
    "format": "󰅐 {}",
    "on-scroll-up": "brightnessctl s +5%",
    "on-scroll-down": "brightnessctl s 5%-"
},
"custom/pacman": {
    "exec": "checkupdates | wc -l",
    "signal": 8,
    "format": "󰮯 {}",
    "on-click": "sudo pacman -Syu && pkill -RTMIN+8 mangobar"
}

Fields:

• exec: command whose stdout becomes the module text (trailing newline trimmed)
• interval: refresh interval in seconds; 0/omitted runs once at startup
• signal: realtime signal number N that re-runs the module. Mangobar listens on SIGRTMIN+N (like Waybar) and updates the module whenever the signal arrives, e.g. pkill -RTMIN+8 mangobar. With signal set and no interval, the script runs once at startup and then only on the signal; with both set, it also refreshes on the interval.
• format: shown as-is, with {} replaced by the exec output; if omitted the raw exec output is shown
• on-click / on-click-middle / on-click-right / on-scroll-up / on-scroll-down: shell commands or @ipc:xxx commands

Custom modules are styled with #custom-<name> selectors, e.g. #custom-power { background-color: #cc241d; color: #ffffff; }.

Right-click a tray item with a menu to open a context menu; clicking outside closes it.

Styling

~/.config/mangobar/style.css supports a small CSS subset: color, background, padding, margin, border-radius, min-width, font-family/size/weight, @define-color, and linear-gradient (first color). Selectors: *, #module, #module.state, and #custom-<name>.

See style.css.example.

Module actions

Actions are configured through the JSONC config's on-click / on-scroll-* fields. Special commands:

• @view / @toggle: switch / toggle a tag over IPC
• @ipc:xxx: send xxx verbatim over IPC
• anything else: run via /bin/sh -c