What is waybar?

Waybar is a status bar application for Linux desktops that use the Wayland display protocol. A status bar sits at the top or bottom of your screen and shows information like the current time, battery level, network connection, volume, and which workspace or window is active. Waybar is designed to be highly configurable, so users can choose exactly which modules to display and how they should look. The bar integrates with several popular Wayland-based desktop environments and window managers, including Sway, Hyprland, River, Niri, and DWL. Each of these has its own way of managing windows and workspaces, and Waybar has specific support for each, showing relevant information like active workspace names, focused window titles, and keyboard layout. It also supports a system tray for application icons, Bluetooth status, Pulseaudio and Wireplumber audio controls, disk and memory usage, CPU load, temperature, and a music player daemon (MPD) module, among others. Installation is available through most major Linux distribution package managers, so most users will not need to build from source. For those who do want to build it, the README lists all required libraries and provides exact package manager commands for Ubuntu and Arch Linux. The build process uses Meson and Ninja, two standard build tools in the C++ ecosystem. Configuration and visual styling are handled through separate config and CSS files, with detailed documentation available on the project's wiki. The README does not reproduce those details directly. Contributions follow Google's C++ style guidelines. The project is MIT licensed, meaning it can be used and modified freely. The README warns that there is no official Waybar website, and releases are published only through the GitHub page.