catfood =^,^=

catfood Bar =^,^=

A customizable system status bar built with Rust and extensible with Lua. Part of the catfood utility suite.

Features

• Modular Components: Choose from 13+ built-in components or create custom Lua components
• Live Configuration: Hot-reload config changes without restarting
• Sparkline Visualization: Real-time usage graphs for system metrics
• Multi-Bar Layout: Left, middle, and right bar sections
• Color Support: Optional colorize mode (TODO: Configurable color themes)
• Error Handling: Graceful error display and logging

Installation

Dependencies

• Rust 1.70+
• Hyprland
• NetworkManager
• lm-sensors (for component temperatures)
• kitty terminal (makes use of kitten panel to render the bar)

![NOTE] Whereas the catfood bar utility does directly depend on Kitty, the catfood-bar binary may work without it. You will need to handle your own layering and positioning if you give this a try.

From crates.io

# Install catfood
cargo install catfood

From Source

# Build and install
cargo install --path crates/catfood

# Or build and run locally
cargo run --release --bin catfood -- bar

Usage

Run the system bar:

catfood bar

When run through the main catfood CLI, it automatically spawns in a kitty panel:

To set the position, you must run the catfood-bar binary directly:

# Bottom of screen
kitten panel --edge=bottom catfood-bar

Configuration

Configuration is stored in ~/.config/catfood/bar.json. The first run creates a default config with all components enabled.

Basic Configuration

{
  "bars": {
    "left": ["workspaces"],
    "middle": ["time", "separator", "weather"],
    "right": [
      "temperature",
      "cpu",
      "ram",
      "separator",
      "wifi",
      "separator",
      "brightness",
      "volume",
      "separator",
      "battery"
    ]
  },
  "colorize": true
}

Component Types

Components can be specified as either strings or objects with additional options:

String Components

{
  "bars": {
    "right": ["cpu", "ram", "wifi"]
  }
}

Object Components with Options

{
  "bars": {
    "right": [
      {
        "name": "cpu",
        "sparkline": true,
        "sparkline_length": 8,
        "sparkline_update_freq": 2
      }
    ]
  }
}

Available Components

System Monitoring

• workspaces - Hyprland workspace switching
• windows - Window management info
• cpu - CPU usage percentage (supports sparkline)
• ram - Memory usage percentage (supports sparkline)
• temperature - CPU temperature
• battery - Battery status and percentage

Network

• wifi - WiFi connection status and signal strength (supports sparkline)
• weather - Current weather information

Audio & Display

• volume - System volume level
• brightness - Screen brightness

Time & Date

• time - Current date and time

Layout Components

• separator - Visual separator (" | ")
• space - Single space character for fine spacing

Sparkline Components

The following components support sparkline visualization:

• cpu - Real-time CPU usage graph
• ram - Memory usage over time
• wifi - WiFi signal strength history

Sparkline Options

• sparkline (default: false) - Enable sparkline mode
• sparkline_length (default: 10) - Graph width in characters
• sparkline_update_freq (default: varies) - Update frequency in seconds
  • CPU: 3 seconds
  • RAM: 2 seconds
  • WiFi: 2 seconds
• sparkline_logarithmic (default: false) - Use logarithmic scaling

Custom Lua Components

Create custom components in ~/.config/catfood/components/*.lua:

return {
    config = {
        -- Component-specific settings
    },
    
    update = function()
        -- Update state periodically (optional)
    end,
    
    render = function(colorize)
        -- Return {"text", "color"} or "text"
        return {"12:34", "yellow"}
    end
}

Available colors: red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, black, gray, dark_red, dark_green, dark_yellow, dark_blue, dark_magenta, dark_cyan, dark_gray.

![NOTE] Color support is a work in progress. Not all of these colors may work. In future, user-defined colors may be supported along with fallback values for more restricted terminal color-spaces.

Configuration Examples

Minimal Setup

{
  "bars": {
    "left": ["workspaces"],
    "middle": ["time"],
    "right": ["battery"]
  }
}

System Monitoring Focus

{
  "bars": {
    "left": ["workspaces"],
    "middle": ["time", "separator", "temperature"],
    "right": [
      {"name": "cpu", "sparkline": true, "sparkline_length": 8},
      "space",
      {"name": "ram", "sparkline": true, "sparkline_length": 8},
      "separator",
      {"name": "wifi", "sparkline": true, "sparkline_length": 10}
    ]
  }
}

Compact Layout

{
  "bars": {
    "left": ["workspaces"],
    "middle": ["time"],
    "right": [
      {"name": "cpu", "sparkline": true, "sparkline_length": 4},
      "space",
      {"name": "ram", "sparkline": true, "sparkline_length": 4},
      "space",
      {"name": "wifi", "sparkline": true, "sparkline_length": 4}
    ]
  }
}

Hot-Reload

Configuration changes are applied automatically:

1. Edit ~/.config/catfood/bar.json
2. Save the file
3. Changes appear instantly without restarting

Logging

Errors are logged to ~/.local/share/catfood/logs/bar.log:

2025-12-21T03:45:12Z [ERROR] [COMPONENT_WORKSPACES] Error: Failed to get workspaces
2025-12-21T03:45:13Z [ERROR] [CONFIG] Failed to reload configuration: ...

The log maintains the last 1000 lines.

License

Copyright (c) Thom Bruce thom@thombruce.com

Licensed under the MIT license.