Skyline

Native Wayland status bar with modular islands. Built in Rust with iced + iced_layershell — no GTK, no Electron.

Requires a compositor that implements wlr-layer-shell (niri, Hyprland, Sway, …).

Features

• Per-monitor layer-shell bars (AllScreens, or pin one with --output / SKYLINE_OUTPUT)
• Island layout: left / center / right module groups
• Niri (EventStream) and Hyprland compositor backends (auto-detect)
• Workspaces, icon taskbar, focused window title (per-monitor)
• Clock with hover tooltip
• Weather from wttr.in (emoji + °C/°F, hover details)
• CPU / RAM / GPU meters (per-core CPU, AMD sysfs / NVIDIA nvidia-smi)
• Network (SSID / ethernet via ip + iw / iwd / wpa_cli — event-driven)
• Volume (Pulse/PipeWire subscribe, wpctl fallback) and brightness (brightnessctl)
• Custom command islands (interval + optional JSON text field)
• StatusNotifierItem system tray host with DBusMenu popups
• Config hot-reload on save

Quick start

make            # release build → target/release/skyline
make config     # write ~/.config/skyline/config.toml if missing
make run        # run from target/ (does not rebuild)

Optional user install (no sudo):

make install-user   # ~/.local/bin/skyline + man page
make help

Runtime helpers (optional, feature-dependent):

Helper	Used for
wpctl / Pulse	volume read/write
brightnessctl	screen backlight (-c backlight)
ip, iw / iwgetid / wpa_cli / busctl (iwd)	network label + signal
fc-list	detect a Nerd Font for volume glyphs
nvidia-smi	NVIDIA GPU utilization
curl	weather module (wttr.in)

Run

make run
SKYLINE_OUTPUT=DP-1 make run    # one output only
RUST_LOG=skyline=debug,system_tray=warn make run

niri

spawn-at-startup "skyline"
# or a local build:
spawn-at-startup "/absolute/path/to/skyline/target/release/skyline"

Hyprland

exec-once = skyline

Detection: NIRI_SOCKET wins over HYPRLAND_INSTANCE_SIGNATURE. Override with [compositor] backend = "niri" | "hyprland" | "none" | "auto".

Config

Default path: ~/.config/skyline/config.toml

Full annotated defaults: examples/config.toml (also written by skyline --write-example-config / make example-config).

Edits are hot-reloaded on save: theme, module lists, separators, scroll steps, bar size/margins/exclusive zone, clock format, weather location/unit/interval, sys refresh, custom modules, click commands. Switching the compositor backend still needs a restart.

CLI:

skyline [--config PATH] [--write-example-config]

After make install-user, see man skyline if ~/.local/share/man is on your manpath.

Layout

[modules]
left = ["workspaces", "taskbar", "window"]
center = ["clock", "weather"]
right = ["tray", "cpu", "memory", "gpu", "network", "brightness", "volume"]

Built-in names: workspaces, taskbar, window, clock, weather, cpu, memory, gpu, network, volume, brightness, tray. Custom islands are custom:<id> (or a bare id that is treated as custom).

Module clicks

Most module sections accept shell commands (sh -c):

[modules.clock]
on_click = "gsimplecal"
on_right_click = "xdg-open https://calendar.google.com"

[modules.volume]
# When unset, left-click still toggles mute
on_click = "pavucontrol"
on_right_click = "wpctl set-mute @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ toggle"

on_left_click is an alias for on_click. Tray icons keep native SNI actions.

Weather

Current conditions via wttr.in (curl). Shown next to the clock by default. Hover for location, feels-like, wind, humidity, and today’s high/low.

[modules.weather]
# location = "Montreal"   # empty = IP geolocation
unit = "c"                # "c" or "f"
interval_ms = 600000
on_click = "xdg-open https://wttr.in"

Volume / brightness

[modules.volume]
step = 0.02              # fraction of full scale per scroll notch
max_percent = 150.0
detect_bluetooth = true  # headset glyph +  when default sink is bluez
show_device = false
show_percent = true

[modules.brightness]
step = 2.0               # percent points per scroll notch
show_percent = true

Scroll input is debounced (~70 ms) so trackpads stay controllable.

Meters

[modules.sys]
refresh_ms = 1000

[modules.cpu]
label = "CPU"
format = "{label} {bar}"   # tokens: {label} {bar}/{meter} {percent}/{pct}
on_click = "alacritty -e btop"

CPU draws one column per logical core. RAM is a fill meter (meter_bars columns). GPU is one column per detected device (AMD gpu_busy_percent, else NVIDIA).

Network

[modules.network]
show_name = true       # SSID / "Ethernet" (not wlan0)
show_strength = false
max_chars = 24

Taskbar

Icon strip of windows on the active workspace of that monitor.

[modules.taskbar]
width = 22.0           # icon square (alias: icon_size)
padding = 3.0
gap = 4.0
border_width = 3.0     # focused chip outline; unset → theme island_border_width
max_items = 12

Left-click focuses the window (niri / Hyprland). Icons resolve from app id, .desktop Icon=, then a letter fallback.

Custom islands

[[modules.custom]]
id = "uptime"
command = "uptime"
args = ["-p"]
interval_ms = 60000
json = false           # true → parse stdout JSON and use the `text` field

Reference as custom:uptime in left / center / right.

Separators and tray menu

[bar]
separators = true
separator = "│"
tray_menu_gap = 4         # px between bar and tray menu / clock tooltip
tray_menu_align = "icon"  # "icon" = under the clicked tray icon; "end" = bar edge

Theming

Colors are RGBA floats in [0, 1]. exclusive_zone reserves compositor space for the bar; set it to 0 for floating islands (windows can go under the bar).

[theme]
background = [0.039, 0.031, 0.078, 0.0]
island_background = [0.196, 0.173, 0.290, 1.0]
text = [0.929, 0.910, 0.980, 1.0]
muted = [0.706, 0.675, 0.812, 1.0]
accent = [0.659, 0.580, 0.878, 1.0]
danger = [0.878, 0.557, 0.722, 1.0]
separator = [0.541, 0.482, 0.769, 0.55]
island_radius = 0.0
island_border = [0.659, 0.580, 0.878, 1.0]
island_border_width = 3.0
island_shadow = [0.039, 0.031, 0.078, 1.0]
island_shadow_offset = [6.0, 6.0]
island_shadow_blur = 0.0
island_padding = [4, 12]     # vertical, horizontal
island_margin = [0, 2]
font = "Fira Sans"
emoji_font = "Noto Color Emoji"
font_size = 14.0
meter_height = 16.0
meter_width = 4.0
meter_gap = 2.0
meter_bars = 12

Volume icons use a detected Nerd Font (Waybar-style   ) when fc-list finds one; otherwise they fall back to the UI font.

Architecture

Crate	Role
skyline	Binary: iced daemon, widgets, layer-shell popups
skyline-core	Config, ModuleKind, snapshots, ServiceEvent
skyline-services	Clock, weather, sys, net, audio, brightness, tray, custom, config watch
skyline-niri	Niri EventStream → CompositorState
skyline-hyprland	Hyprland IPC → CompositorState
vendor/system-tray	Patched SNI host (see below)

Background threads push ServiceEvents into iced. Identical snapshots are dropped before redraw. See AGENTS.md for contributor / agent notes.

System tray

Skyline vendors a patched system-tray under vendor/system-tray that:

• Fixes IconPixmap height field parsing
• Soft-fails malformed pixmap/tooltip properties instead of dropping the item
• Keeps the registration stream alive when one client misbehaves

This avoids the common ERROR system_tray::client: zbus variant error abort.

Left-click activates the item; right-click opens its DBusMenu as an overlay. Escape or clicking outside dismisses the menu.

Environment

Variable	Effect
SKYLINE_OUTPUT	Bind to one Wayland output (e.g. DP-1)
NIRI_SOCKET	Niri backend available
HYPRLAND_INSTANCE_SIGNATURE	Hyprland backend available
RUST_LOG	tracing-subscriber filter

Development

make check          # cargo check -p skyline
make build-debug
make run-debug

Agent / contributor guide: AGENTS.md.

License

MIT