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Polybar VS Quickshell

Compare Polybar VS Quickshell and see what are their differences

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Contents:
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  2. » Videos
  3. » Reviews
  4. » Alternatives

Polybar logo Polybar

Status bar for Unix-like systems.

Quickshell logo Quickshell

A Flexible toolkit for making desktop shells with QtQuick, targeting Wayland and X11.
  • 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.

Quickshell features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Quickshell is designed to simplify the shell experience, making it more user-friendly for both beginners and advanced users.
  • Customization
    The platform offers various customization options that allow users to tailor the interface and functionality to their specific needs.
  • Integration
    Quickshell integrates well with other tools and services, providing a seamless workflow for users who rely on multiple applications.
  • Performance
    It is optimized for speed and efficiency, ensuring that users can perform tasks quickly without unnecessary lag.

Possible disadvantages of Quickshell

  • Limited Advanced Features
    While it is user-friendly, Quickshell may lack some of the advanced features that experienced developers might require.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its ease of use, there might still be a learning curve for users who are completely new to shell environments.
  • Platform Dependency
    It might depend on specific platform requirements or compatibility, which could limit its usability across different systems.
  • Pricing
    If there is a cost associated, price could be a barrier for users looking for a free alternative.

Polybar videos

+ Add

[8e] | Polybar on i3

More videos:

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

Quickshell videos

No Quickshell videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Polybar and Quickshell)

Polybar

Quickshell

Productivity
65 65%
Productivity
35% 35
Note Taking
65 65%
Note Taking
35% 35
App Launcher
52 52%
App Launcher
48% 48
LMS
58 58%
LMS
42% 42

User comments

Share your experience with using Polybar and Quickshell. 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

Quickshell mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Quickshell yet. Tracking of Quickshell recommendations started around Jun 2025.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Polybar and Quickshell, you can also consider the following products

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

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

ironbar - Customisable Wayland gtk bar written in Rust.

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.

nwg-panel - Nwg-panel is a GTK3-based panel for sway and Hyprland Wayland compositors. The panel is equipped with a graphical configuration program that frees the user from the need to manually edit configuration files.

xfce-panel - Xfce componet to switch between opened windows, launch applications, switch workspaces and menu plugins to browse applications or directories.

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