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Polybar VS i3status-rust

Compare Polybar VS i3status-rust and see what are their differences

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Polybar logo Polybar

Status bar for Unix-like systems.

i3status-rust logo i3status-rust

i3status-rs is a feature-rich and resource-friendly replacement for i3status, written in pure Rust. It provides a way to display "blocks" of system information (time, battery status, volume, etc) on bars that support the i3bar protocol.
  • Polybar Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-26
Not present

Polybar features and specs

  • Highly Customizable
    Polybar offers extensive customization options allowing users to tailor the status bar to their preferences, including color schemes, fonts, modules, and scripts.
  • Lightweight
    Polybar is designed to be lightweight, ensuring it consumes minimal system resources while providing a functional user interface enhancement.
  • Modular Design
    With its modular system, Polybar allows users to enable or disable certain modules according to their needs, offering flexibility and ease of use.
  • Script Support
    Users can integrate scripts into Polybar for displaying custom information, which adds to its extensibility and adaptability to various use cases.
  • Active Community
    There is an active community and extensive documentation that can provide support, resources, and inspiration for customization ideas.

Possible disadvantages of Polybar

  • Steep Learning Curve
    For new users, especially those not familiar with configuration files and scripting, setting up Polybar can be initially challenging.
  • Limited to X11
    Polybar currently does not support Wayland, limiting its use to X11 window systems unless additional third-party workarounds are applied.
  • Manual Configuration
    Polybar requires manual editing of configuration files, which might not be user-friendly for those more accustomed to GUI-based customization.
  • Dependency Management
    Users may need to manage and install dependencies manually, which can be cumbersome if not documented or managed by package distributions.
  • Potential for Overhead
    Although lightweight, highly customizing Polybar with numerous scripts and modules can introduce overhead and require additional performance tuning.

i3status-rust features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Polybar videos

+ Add

[8e] | Polybar on i3

More videos:

  • Review - Polybar III: Using Polybar with Multiple Window Managers
  • Review - My Dotfiles - HLWM Polybar Arch

i3status-rust videos

No i3status-rust videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Polybar and i3status-rust)

Polybar

i3status-rust

Productivity
82 82%
Productivity
18% 18
App Launcher
68 68%
App Launcher
32% 32
Note Taking
81 81%
Note Taking
19% 19
LMS
70 70%
LMS
30% 30

User comments

Share your experience with using Polybar and i3status-rust. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Polybar seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 24 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Polybar mentions (24)

  • Is there a way I can tell which exit node I am using from CLI in Linux?
    I'd like to just be able to write a short shell script to check if an exit node is in use, and then pipe that output into polybar which I use anyway. The problem is that I can't find an option in the tailscale Linux CLI client that will show me whether I'm using an exit node or not. Is there a way to do this? Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Are there any tools to analyse/modify colours directly from a bash script?
    I am on Arch Linux and I am using pywal to generate a colour palette from my wallpaper, which I then use throughout my system. In particular, I have a bash script which grabs these colours and uses them for polybar. The problem is that sometimes these colours do not have enough contrast, and the bar is hard to read. Is there any tool that would allow me to check the readability of my colours, and modify them... Source: over 2 years ago
  • How do you deal with volume >100% and ramp-weights?
    Maybe check out the canonical page instead: https://github.com/polybar/polybar. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Top Bar
    A common one is polybar, but there are quite a few so they can't be hard to tell just from how it looks. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Top Bar
    That is a status bar, often used with tiling window managers. A popular one would be https://github.com/polybar/polybar. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

i3status-rust mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of i3status-rust yet. Tracking of i3status-rust recommendations started around Jun 2025.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Polybar and i3status-rust, you can also consider the following products

Yambar - Modular status panel for X11 and Wayland, inspired by polybar.

Waybar - Highly customizable Wayland bar for Sway and Wlroots based compositors. :v: :tada: - GitHub - Alexays/Waybar: Highly customizable Wayland bar for Sway and Wlroots based compositors.

tint2 - git clone https://gitlab. com/o9000/tint2. git cd tint2 git checkout 16. 1 mkdir build cd build cmake ..

wf-shell - wf-shell is a repository which contains the various components needed to built a fully functional DE based around wayfire. Currently it has only a GTK-based panel and background client.

ironbar - Customisable Wayland gtk bar written in Rust.

slstatus - slstatus is a status monitor for window managers that use WM_NAME or stdin to fill the status bar.

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