Waybar Workspace Taskbar

Workspace taskbar for window managers that shows only open windows from the current workspace. This differs from included wlr taskbar which shows all open windows on all workspaces. This takes advantage of the waybar cffi module Waybar CFFI.

This was developed mostly due to non traditional window manager layouts like scrolling, fullscreen tabbed, or monocle where you can easily lose track of your open windows. This gives you the ability to easily visualize your open windows. Tabs will try to be sorted so they reflect the left and right cycling positions of your windows. All floating windows will be sorted to the end in the order they are received.

Suported Window Managers

Window managers need to have the abilty for us to get the required data to display the windows. This would include an ipc or command line interface to listen to workspace and window events and fetch the required data. Then some way to be able to send commands to focus, close and toggle float on windows.

Currently supported window managers.

• Sway
• Hyprland
• Niri

Building and Installation

You must be on linux and have some required packages installed. Look to your package manager for the correct installation of each.

• c compiler (Gcc/Clang)
• make
• meson
• gtk+-3.0 version >=3.22.0
• json-glib-1.0

Then clone or dowload the repo and you can simply run

make

I'll leave the installation location up to you. You only need the .so file in the build folder.

cp build/waybar-workspace-taskbar.so /your/desired/location/

More than likely you would move it to ~/.config/waybar/cffi/

Configuration

You need to setup the cffi/module-name in your config.json file for waybar. Reference Waybar CFFI Example.

Minimal example:

"modules-left": [
    "cffi/waybar-workspace-taskbar"
],
"cffi/waybar-workspace-taskbar": {
    "module_path": "~/.config/waybar/cffi/waybar-workspace-taskbar.so",
    "window-manager": "sway"
}

Note: You may need to use absolute paths depending on your environment.

Installation And Configuration with Nix Flakes

If you are using Nix Flakes, you can consume this module directly without building it manually.

1. In your flake.nix inputs, add:

waybar-workspace-taskbar.url = "github:stevekanger/waybar-workspace-taskbar/main";

2. Then in your waybar config, configure the module like:

"cffi/waybar-workspace-taskbar": {
   "module_path": "${inputs.waybar-workspace-taskbar.packages.${system}.default}/waybar-workspace-taskbar.so",
   "window-manager": "sway"
}

Configuration Options

IMPORTANT: Configuration inside this module does not support comments in your json

Even though your using jsonc waybar doesn't parse out the comments when passing them to the cffi module. So as of right now keep your comments outside the cffi module config.

Options use kebab-case in key names for spaces to follow most of the waybar convention. Although module_path is a waybar specific option that uses snake_case.

Option	Required	Default	Allowed	Description
module_path	yes	NULL	string	The path to this modules .so file.
window-manager	yes	NULL	"sway", "hyprland", "niri"	The window manager you are currently using.
output	no	NULL	true, false	The monitor you want to bind to. If no output is set then it defaults to showing the focused workspace.
show-icon	no	true	true, false	Whether or not you want to show the application icon.
show-title	no	false	true, false	Whether or not you want to show the window title.
show-tooltip	no	false	true, false	Whether or not you want to show a tooltip when hovering on the tab.
text-align	no	"center"	"left", "right", "center"	Position of the text and icon in the tab.
max-tabs	no	-1	int	Max amount of tabs to show -1 for unlimited. (See css configuration below to show the overflow indicator)
title-max-chars	no	-1	int > 3	Max amount of characters to show in the title, -1 for unlimited. (Note: this includes ellipsis so if you set to 10, 3 of those characters will be ...)
icon-size	no	16	int > 0	The size of the app icon to be displayed. (Note: icon aspect ratio is 1:1 so default is 16x16)
show-navigation-btns	no	0	0 = never, 1 = overlfow only, 2 = always	Whether or not to show navigation buttons. Navigation buttons switch focus prev and next.
navigation-btn-pos	no	0	0 = staggered, 1 = before, 2 = after	Position of the navigation buttons. Before tabs, after tabs, or staggered one on each side.
navigation-btn-prev-label	no	"<"	string	The label for the navigation prev button.
navigation-btn-next-label	no	">"	string	The label for the navigation next button.
on-click	no	NULL	string	The command to run when left clicking a tab. See Configuring Click Actions
on-click-middle	no	NULL	string	The command to run when middle clicking a tab. See Configuring Click Actions
on-click-right	no	NULL	string	The command to run when right clicking a tab. See Configuring Click Actions
navigation-btn-on-click	no	NULL	string	The command to run when left clicking a navigation button. See Configuring Click Actions

Configuring Click Actions

Click actions are commands you can run on certain clicks. The window id will be passed in via a replace character {id}. Each command will be forked to a new process. Here are some common examples.

Hyprland Lua

{
  "on-click": "hyprctl dispatch 'hl.dsp.focus({window=\"address:{id}\"})'",
  "on-click-middle": "hyprctl dispatch 'hl.dsp.window.float({action=\"toggle\",window=\"address:{id}\"})'",
  "on-click-right": "hyprctl dispatch 'hl.dsp.window.close({window=\"address:{id}\"})'",
  "navigation-btn-on-click": "hyprctl dispatch 'hl.dsp.focus({window=\"address:{id}\"})'"
}

Niri

{
  "on-click": "niri msg action focus-window --id {id}",
  "on-click-middle": "niri msg action toggle-window-floating --id {id}",
  "on-click-right": "niri msg action close-window --id {id}",
  "navigation-btn-on-click": "niri msg action focus-window --id {id}"
}

Sway

{
  "on-click": "swaymsg \"[con_id={id}] focus\"",
  "on-click-middle": "swaymsg \"[con_id={id}] floating toggle\"",
  "on-click-right": "swaymsg \"[con_id={id}] kill\"",
  "navigation-btn-on-click": "swaymsg \"[con_id={id}] focus\""
}

you may also pass in custom scripts like:

{
  "on-click": "~/path/to/my/script {id}"
}

Configuring Styles

A couple of css classes will be applied so you can style things accordingly.

• .taskbar
• .taskbar.overflow-start
• .taskbar.overflow-end
• .taskbar.empty
• .taskbar.single
• .tabs
• .tab
• .tab.focused
• .tab.floating
• .tab.urgent
• .navigation-btn-prev
• .navigation-btn-next

Simple example might be like the following:

.taskbar.overflow-start .tabs {
  border-left: 10px solid red;
}

.taskbar.overflow-end .tabs {
  border-right: 10px solid red;
}

.tab {
  color: white;
  padding: 5px 10px;
}

.tab.focused {
  background: blue;
}

.tab.floating {
  color: green;
}

.tab.urgent {
  color: red;
}

The css parent/child structure is as follows:

<Taskbar>
  <NavigationBtnPrev />
  <Tabs>
    <Tab />
    <Tab />
    <Tab />
  </Tabs>
  <NavigationBtnNext />
</Taskbar>

Known issues

Hyprland

• Hyprctl doesn't expose urgent status when fetching window information.
• Hyprland doesn't send an event when toggling floating windows. So window status and sorting will not be updated until you change focus.

License

Waybar Workspace Taskbar is licensed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for more information.