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otter-bar is the Otter Shell status bar. It anchors to the top or bottom of each output through zwlr_layer_shell_v1. Config and theme reload without a restart.

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Features

  • Workspace indicator and switcher (otter-tag, Mango/dwl IPC, ext-workspace)
  • Active window title with icon
  • Clock with timezone-aware formatting and date tooltip
  • Battery via UPower (auto-hides when no battery)
  • Brightness from /sys/class/backlight/
  • Power profiles (power-profiles-daemon / tuned-ppd)
  • CPU, temperature, memory, and network widgets
  • Volume via PipeWire with scroll-to-adjust and device popup
  • MPRIS media player with album art
  • System tray (StatusNotifierItem) with context menus
  • Do Not Disturb toggle shared with notifications and OSD
  • Night Light toggle (nightlight) for otter-nightlight
  • Custom button widgets with an icon and a command
  • HiDPI scaling per output

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Usage

Add it to compositor autostart: see Session setup. The menu button runs otter-launcher by default. Change it with button_menu_command. The optional power button runs otter-logout by default. Set button_power_enabled = true, then add button_power to a layout. Third-party widgets load as plugin:<id> slots. Enable them in otter-settings Plugins, then drag the chip into the layout. See Plugins. otter-bluetooth-plugin installs plugin:bluetooth-applet and depends on blueman. Enable it under Plugins, then add plugin:bluetooth-applet to a layout. Click the chip for status and device controls. The applet menu can open blueman-manager.

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Configuration

Config: ~/.config/otter-shell/otter-bar.conf (fallback: /etc/otter-shell/otter-bar.conf). Created on first run.
Drag widgets in otter-settings instead of editing layout strings.
Key settings:
Widget color fields are optional. Omit them to inherit from theme.conf. Saving theme.conf updates bar widget colors without editing otter-bar.conf.

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Do Not Disturb

Add dnd to any layout section. Click its bell icon to pause or resume notification and OSD popups. Notifications stay queued while DND is on.

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Night Light

Add nightlight to any layout section. Left-click enables or disables otter-nightlight. Right-click for temperature presets, the schedule window, and a one-hour suspend. The widget does nothing if the daemon is not running.

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Weather widget

Add weather to a layout section, then run the cache watcher:
Set coordinates in ~/.config/otter-shell/otter-weather.conf. See otter-weather.

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Calendar popover

Point the clock widget at otter-cal:

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Dependencies

  • Wayland compositor with zwlr_layer_shell_v1
  • D-Bus (UPower, MPRIS, system tray): disable with -Denable_dbus=false at build time
  • PipeWire (volume widget): disable with -Denable_pipewire=false at build time