The Conky Blog The Official Blog for Conky, a Lightweight System Monitor

Feature Feature: A simple desktop indicator using $desktop

If you don't use a desktop pager in a panel, it's useful to have it displayed on your desktop itself. Here's a quick guide to creating a simple desktop indicator in Conky, using a combination of $image and $desktop.

To give you an idea of what we're aiming for, here's a screenshot, with the desktop indicator in the top right:

Step 1: Make the squares

The first thing to do is to create two simple images in GIMP or similar program. You'll need one semi-transparent black square (I used 75% transparency) and one opaque white square.  You can make them as small as you like, because we'll use $image's -s flag to make them the right size in Conky (I made them 50x50px).

Step 2: Decide on the placement/layout of your desktop indicator boxes

As you can see from the example above, I use my four desktops in a line, but you may use them in a square or rectangle. You'll need to decide where to place all your squares. I did this in my head, but you may also choose to use graph paper to work it out. Conky places images using the top left corner as an anchor, so you'll be interested in the coordinates of that point for each of your squares. In my example above, the size of my Conky dictated that I placed my squares at (3,5) (47,5) (91,5) (135,5) -- starting at x=3, each square was 40px wide with 4px spacing between.

Step 3: Code your Conky!

First, draw all the black, semi-transparent squares:

${image ~/Pictures/bk_semi_trans_sq.png -p 3,5 -s 40x40}${image ~/Pictures/bk_semi_trans_sq.png -p 47,5 -s 40x40}${image ~/Pictures/bk_semi_trans_sq.png -p 91,5 -s 40x40}${image ~/Pictures/bk_semi_trans_sq.png -p 135,5 -s 40x40}

Then, use $if_match and $desktop to choose where to place the white square:

${if_match ${desktop}==1}${image ~/Pictures/wh_sq.png -p 3,5 -s 40x40}${endif}${if_match ${desktop}==2}${image ~/Pictures/wh_sq.png -p 47,5 -s 40x40}${endif}${if_match ${desktop}==3}${image ~/Pictures/wh_sq.png -p 91,5 -s 40x40}${endif}${if_match ${desktop}==4}${image ~/Pictures/wh_sq.png -p 135,5 -s 40x40}${endif}

Et voila! Enjoy your new desktop indicator!

A couple of notes:

You will need to adjust your update_interval config variable (e.g. before TEXT), depending on how responsive you want your indicator to be. I use 0.1.

This method will not work if you are running Compiz. That's because Compiz draws all of your "desktops" as virtual desktops all on one desktop. You will only ever appear to be on desktop 1! The example above was done running OpenBox as a desktop environment, with no compositing.

Feature Feature: own_window_type panel

Conky 1.7.2 includes support for the panel window-type, which means that you can make your Conky behave like other panels. Here's what it looks like to replace a top panel with a Conky panel, so that system information is always on display, even over a maximised window:

own_window_type panel (Conky 1.7.2)

own_window_type panel (Conky 1.7.2)

To get Conky to behave like a panel, use the following window configuration before the TEXT in your .conkyrc:

own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type panel
own_window_hints undecorate,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager # NB: normally, below is used here, but we don't want that for our panel

Additionally, if you want your panel to stretch all the way across like in the screenie, and flush against the side of the screen, you'll need:

border_inner_margin 0
border_outer_margin 0
minimum_size 1024 0 # replace 1024 with the horizontal resolution of your monitor, if applicable

A final word of warning: if you want your panel to be all on one line, like the screenie above, be sure to code your Conky all in one line, even if you use $goto and $voffset to control text placement. If your code is on three lines, for instance, the size of the Conky window will be big enough for three lines, even if what they output doesn't stretch down that far.

To get your panel to look just like the one in the screenie, there are a couple of finishing touches:

1. Use a program like GIMP to create a small (e.g. 50x50 px) semi-transparent black square, and stretch it with the $image variable's -s (size) flag to the size of the panel you want.
2. Normally, if you're using Compiz, you want to disable shadows around your Conky window, but for this one, the shadow is quite nice and makes our panel look even more panel-ish!

The .conkyrc for the screenies above is:

background no
update_interval 1
total_run_times 0
cpu_avg_samples 2
net_avg_samples 2
own_window yes
own_window_type panel
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_class Conky-Panel
own_window_hints undecorate,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
border_inner_margin 0
border_outer_margin 0
double_buffer yes
no_buffers yes
text_buffer_size 2048
imlib_cache_size 0
override_utf8_locale yes
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
use_spacer none
minimum_size 1024 0
alignment top_middle
gap_x 0
gap_y 0
uppercase no
top_name_width 7
use_xft yes
xftfont Sawasdee Bold:size=8
xftalpha 0.8
default_color ffffff

TEXT
${goto 5}${voffset 3}CPU ${cpu}%${goto 60}${voffset -1}${font saxMono:size=8}[${top name 1} (${top cpu 1})] [${top name 2} (${top cpu 2})] [${top name 3} (${top cpu 3})]${font}${goto 425}${voffset -1}MEM ${memperc}%${goto 485}${voffset -1}${font saxMono:size=8}[${top_mem name 1} (${top_mem mem 1})] [${top_mem name 2} (${top_mem mem 2})] [${top_mem name 3} (${top_mem mem 3})]${font}${voffset -2}${font Sawasdee Bold:size=10}${alignr 5}${time %a, %d %b %Y %H.%M}${image ~/Pictures/bk_semi_trans_sq.png -s 1024x18 -p 0,0}${if_match ${battery_percent BAT1} <= 14}${image ~/Pictures/Batteries/battery_1.png -s 16x16 -p 845,1}${else}${if_match ${battery_percent BAT1} <= 27}${image ~/Pictures/Batteries/battery_2.png -s 16x16 -p 845,1}${else}${if_match ${battery_percent BAT1} <= 41}${image ~/Pictures/Batteries/battery_3.png -s 16x16 -p 845,1}${else}${if_match ${battery_percent BAT1} <= 54}${image ~/Pictures/Batteries/battery_4.png -s 16x16 -p 845,1}${else}${if_match ${battery_percent BAT1} <= 68}${image ~/Pictures/Batteries/battery_5.png -s 16x16 -p 845,1}${else}${if_match ${battery_percent BAT1} <= 82}${image ~/Pictures/Batteries/battery_6.png -s 16x16 -p 845,1}${else}${if_match ${battery_percent BAT1} < 95}${image ~/Pictures/Batteries/battery_7.png -s 16x16 -p 845,1}${else}${image ~/Pictures/Batteries/battery_full.png -s 16x16 -p 845,1}${endif}${endif}${endif}${endif}${endif}${endif}${endif}

Special thanks go to *MrStylo for his superb battery icons, and to =mrcool256 for his devastatingly beautiful wallpaper image.

Feature Feature: Built-in Lua Bindings for Cairo

Cairo Pie Screenshot

As you may have read in the Conky 1.7.2 feature tour, one of the most exciting new features is the ability to draw directly to Conky's window, using Cairo and/or imlib2. As a demonstration, our own Brenden wrote a little Lua script to use Cairo to draw top information as a pie chart. I modified the script slightly to make it fit with my current desktop...et voila!

To reproduce the look above, I've packaged my .conkyrc, Brenden's original cairo-pie.lua and the cairo-pie.lua I modified, over on my gnome-look.org profile.

There are other examples of Lua scripts for Conky over at norsetto.890m.com and further samples of Cairo scripts at cairographics.org.

Enjoy!