Pluto Bar

A suckless status bar for Hyprland and river like DWM status bar.

Build

make

Run

./pluto-status | ./pluto-bar

pluto-status is the compiled status generator. It is a drop-in replacement for the legacy status.sh, which is kept in the tree as a reference. pluto-status --once prints a single line for testing.

Configuration is compile time, like dwm: edit config.h for the bar and status-config.h for the status line, then run make again. Status modules have independent intervals; the defaults use 2-second updates for CPU, RAM and brightness, 5 seconds for temperature and wifi, 10 seconds for battery and home, 60 seconds for uptime and the clock, and 30 seconds for Bluetooth and power-profile checks. Set the intervals to 1 if you want the old 1 Hz behaviour.

The status generator only writes when the text changes. Each module has its own interval in status-config.h; the scheduler sleeps until the next module is due instead of reading every module every second. The bar also sleeps while a status pipe is connected; it keeps a one-second timer only for its built-in clock fallback, and a five-second retry when a window manager socket is disconnected.

Hardware that is absent at startup is not scheduled: battery, temperature, backlight and power-profile modules are removed from the interval set, so a short interval on missing hardware cannot cause wakeups. Audio is polled only when wpctl exists, or read from libpulse events when connected. Wifi keeps its normal off symbol, but rediscovery is limited to WIFI_RETRY_INTERVAL seconds instead of sampling every WIFI_INTERVAL, so a hotplugged interface still appears. Interfaces are found through /proc/net/wireless and /sys/class/net, so cfg80211 drivers that do not populate the WEXT file are still detected; when the link is associated but no signal level is exposed, the full-strength symbol is shown. Bluetooth keeps its off symbol when bluetoothctl is missing; no helper process runs in that case.

Audio and music use event sources when available:

• libpulse is optional. If pkg-config finds it, pluto-status follows the default sink and source through PulseAudio/PipeWire-Pulse, so volume and microphone changes wake the status immediately without periodic helper processes. Without it the build still works and falls back to wpctl polling at AUDIO_INTERVAL. If you install or remove the development package, run make clean && make so the status object is rebuilt against the new flags.
• playerctl is optional. If it is installed, one persistent playerctl --follow process replaces polling, with an occasional liveness check while a song is cached. Without it the song module is disabled.

CPU, RAM, home, uptime, temperature, battery, wifi, brightness and the clock are read directly from /proc, /sys, or the kernel. Their refresh rates are independent; slow-changing modules default to longer intervals. Bluetooth and power-profile helpers are queried infrequently and cached when their hardware or helper exists.

Compositor backends

pluto-bar is split into a Wayland/drawing core and one backend per compositor. The core lives in pluto-bar.c; it never talks to a compositor directly. Backends live in backend-*.c and only fill in monitor state (tags, focus, title, layout) through the small API in bar.h.

backend.c is the only list of backends. It selects the first backend whose detect() succeeds, using the order in its backends[] array.

To add a compositor:

1. copy backend-river.c to backend-foo.c and implement struct Backend;
2. declare it and add it to backends[] in backend.c;
3. add backend-foo.c to SRC in the Makefile.

Removing one is the reverse. Nothing in config.h, the drawing code, or the status path changes. A backend that only needs an environment variable or a socket can skip the global() hook; one that needs a Wayland global can set its detection flag there.