polybar VS wayfire

Compare polybar vs wayfire and see what are their differences.

wayfire

A modular and extensible wayland compositor (by WayfireWM)
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polybar wayfire
279 76
13,426 2,198
1.2% 2.8%
7.9 9.6
4 days ago 7 days ago
C++ C++
MIT License MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

polybar

Posts with mentions or reviews of polybar. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-07-03.
  • Are there any tools to analyse/modify colours directly from a bash script?
    2 projects | /r/bash | 3 Jul 2023
    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 accordingly, directly from my script? If not, how should I be approaching this issue?
  • How do I use polybar with Hyprland?
    2 projects | /r/hyprland | 13 Apr 2023
    The short answer is you can't.
  • [bspwm] yine yeşillik ama biraz farklısından
    6 projects | /r/Linuxtr | 12 Mar 2023
    Çubuk: polybar
  • Looking for a waybar for i3
    2 projects | /r/i3wm | 25 Feb 2023
    It is treaky to show it on all monitors allowing hotpluggin them: https://github.com/polybar/polybar/issues/763
  • Tiny gaps between glyphs and modules
    2 projects | /r/Polybar | 28 Jan 2023
    ================= ; ; ; ██████╗ ██████╗ ██╗ ██╗ ██╗██████╗ █████╗ ██████╗ ; ██╔══██╗██╔═══██╗██║ ╚██╗ ██╔╝██╔══██╗██╔══██╗██╔══██╗ ; ██████╔╝██║ ██║██║ ╚████╔╝ ██████╔╝███████║██████╔╝ ; ██╔═══╝ ██║ ██║██║ ╚██╔╝ ██╔══██╗██╔══██║██╔══██╗ ; ██║ ╚██████╔╝███████╗██║ ██████╔╝██║ ██║██║ ██║ ; ╚═╝ ╚═════╝ ╚══════╝╚═╝ ╚═════╝ ╚═╝ ╚═╝╚═╝ ╚═╝ ; ; ; To learn more about how to configure Polybar ; go to https://github.com/polybar/polybar ; ; The README contains a lot of information ; ;========================================================== ; INCLUDING FILES include-file = ~/.config/polybar/glyphs.ini ; COLORS [colors] background = "#282c34" foreground = "#dcdfe4" shade1 = "#0d5189" shade2 = "#0e5a99" shade3 = "#1063a8" shade4 = "#116cb8" shade5 = "#1375c7" shade6 = "#147ed7" shade7 = "#1687e6" [widths] small = 3px med = 5px large = 6px huge = 10px [util] radius = 0 [bar/left] width = 100% height = 38px #offset-x = 12 #offset-y = 8 radius = ${util.radius} # colors background = ${colors.background} foreground = ${colors.foreground} # text font font-0 = "CaskaydiaCove Nerd Font Mono:size=11;3" # icon font font-1 = "CaskaydiaCove Nerd Font Mono:size=16;3" # microphone icon font-2 = "CaskaydiaCove Nerd Font Mono:size=12;3" # glyph font font-3 = "CaskaydiaCove Nerd Font Mono:style=Medium:size=26;5" modules-left = power left1 bspwm left2 modules-right = right7 ping right6 mic right5 pulseaudio right4 memory right3 cpu right2 date right1 noti cursor-click = pointer cursor-scroll = ns-resize enable-ipc = true wm-restack = bspwm # system tray tray-position = right tray-background = ${colors.shade1} [module/ping] type = custom/script interval=1 exec = echo `ping -c 1 8.8.8.8 -w 1 | tail -1 | awk '{print $4}' | cut -d '/' -f 2 | cut -d '.' -f 1`"ms" format = format-font = 1 format-padding = ${widths.large} format-background=${colors.shade7} [module/noti] type = custom/script interval = 1 exec = $HOME/.config/polybar/scripts/dnd.sh label-padding = ${widths.large} format = format-font = 2 format-background = ${colors.shade1} click-left = $HOME/.config/polybar/scripts/dnd.sh --toggle & [module/playing] type = custom/script interval = 2 exec = playerctl metadata --format ' {{trunc(title, 20)}}' | awk 'NR==1 {print; exit}' click-left = playerctl play-pause [module/power] type = custom/text content = "" content-font = 2 content-padding = ${widths.huge} click-left = $HOME/.config/polybar/scripts/power.sh content-background=${colors.shade1} [module/mic] type = custom/script tail=true exec = $HOME/.config/polybar/scripts/microphone.sh label-padding = ${widths.large} format = format-font = 3 format-background = ${colors.shade6} click-left = pamixer --source 1 -t scroll-up = pamixer --source 1 -i 5 scroll-down = pamixer --source 1 -d 5 [module/pulseaudio] type = internal/pulseaudio label-volume = %percentage%% label-volume-padding = ${widths.large} label-volume-foreground = ${colors.foreground} label-volume-background= ${colors.shade5} label-muted = %percentage%% label-muted-padding = ${widths.large} label-muted-foreground = ${colors.foreground} label-muted-background= ${colors.shade5} format-muted-prefix = "婢" format-muted-prefix-font = 2 format-muted-prefix-padding= ${widths.large} format-muted-prefix-foreground= ${colors.foreground} format-muted-prefix-background= ${colors.shade5} format-volume-prefix = "墳" format-volume-prefix-font = 2 format-volume-prefix-padding= ${widths.large} format-volume-prefix-foreground = ${colors.foreground} format-volume-prefix-background= ${colors.shade5} click-right = pavucontrol & click-left= pamixer -t scroll-up = pamixer -i 5 scroll-down = pamixer -d 5 [module/wlan] type = internal/network interface = wlp21s0f0u5 interval = 3 format-connected = format-disconnected = label-connected = "YES" label-disconnected = "NO" [module/bspwm] type = internal/bspwm pin-workspaces = true enable-click = true enable-scroll = true reverse-scroll = false label-urgent="%name%" label-urgent-background = ${colors.shade2} label-empty-padding = 1 label-empty="%name%" label-empty-background = ${colors.shade2} label-occupied="" label-occupied-padding = 1 label-occupied-background = ${colors.shade2} label-focused-background = ${colors.shade2} label-focused-padding = 1 label-focused="" radius = 15.0 [module/memory] type = internal/memory interval = 2 label = %used:2% label-padding = ${widths.large} label-background = ${colors.shade4} format-prefix = "﬙" format-prefix-font = 2 format-prefix-padding= ${widths.large} format-prefix-background = ${colors.shade4} [module/cpu] type = internal/cpu interval = 2 label = %percentage%% label-padding = ${widths.large} label-background = ${colors.shade3} format-prefix = "" format-prefix-font = 2 format-prefix-padding= ${widths.large} format-prefix-background = ${colors.shade3} [module/date] type = internal/date interval = 1 date = %I:%M %p date-alt = %d %B • %A label = %date% label-padding = ${widths.large} label-background = ${colors.shade2} format-prefix = "" format-prefix-font = 2 format-prefix-padding= ${widths.large} format-prefix-background = ${colors.shade2} [global/wm] margin-top = 10 [settings] screenchange-reload = true pseudo-transparency = false
  • Top Bar
    4 projects | /r/neovim | 26 Jan 2023
    A common one is polybar, but there are quite a few so they can't be hard to tell just from how it looks
    4 projects | /r/neovim | 26 Jan 2023
    That is a status bar, often used with tiling window managers. A popular one would be https://github.com/polybar/polybar
  • nordic.nvim: A warmer and darker implementation of Nord
    5 projects | /r/neovim | 22 Jan 2023
    The bar outside of neovim is polybar and my configs can be found here.
  • Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong to compile polybar?
    3 projects | /r/linuxquestions | 16 Dec 2022
    So, Im following the instructions here: https://github.com/polybar/polybar/wiki/Compiling
  • [BSPWM] My first rice!
    15 projects | /r/linuxmasterrace | 31 Oct 2022
    OS: Arch Linux WM: Bspwm Compositor: Picom Launcher/Powermenu: Rofi Status Bar: Polybar Terminal: Alacritty Shell: Zsh Editor: Neovim Notification: Dunst File Manager: Lf PDF Viewer: Zathura Text fonts: JetBrains Mono Nerd Font DOTFILES: here

wayfire

Posts with mentions or reviews of wayfire. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-10-10.
  • Wayfire (a Wayland compositor) 0.8.0 announcement
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Oct 2023
    I gave Wayfire a shot a bit earlier in the year, but as I am a Dvorak typist and <https://github.com/WayfireWM/wayfire/issues/1601> is marked as "wontfix", I decided to stick to Awesome for the time being. It did run like a dream, though, even on my ancient potato, so if the keybinding issue does get fixed at some point I may well switch over.
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Oct 2023
    One of the developers just responded on the github issue referecing this thread.

    "After a bit of discussion on HackerNews, I got a bit better understanding of the actual problem. People don't want to just configure the keys according to a particular layout - the actual 'issue' here is that they expect the key binding changes together with the layout. Unfortunately, the 0.8.0 changes didn't make this possible to implement as a plugin.

    I would reconsider adding this as an option if there are enough interested people. React with a thumbs up to this comment if you are interested in having this option (though the defaults will certainly remain as they are now). Please, react only if you actually use Wayfire or would use it if it had this feature :)"

    https://github.com/WayfireWM/wayfire/issues/1601#issuecommen...

  • Do we finally switch to Wayland or not?
    3 projects | /r/archlinux | 5 May 2023
    Your impression of Wayland is going to be very much determined by the quality of the compositor implementing it, and I've found Wayfire to be the best, by far - but oddly, also the one least talked about. Everybody's paying attention to stuff like Hyprland, Sway and Mutter - you're barking up the wrong tree there. Wayfire is fantastic, has most of the bells and whistles Compiz on X11 has, and is as pretty or as functional as you want it to be.
  • Which technology / protocol etc. is the next big thing, coming the next few years in Linux gaming?
    4 projects | /r/linux_gaming | 20 Mar 2023
    - VR support
  • Show HN: Parallax wallpaper engine for Linux and Windows
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Feb 2023
  • Swayfire and Wayfire news
    3 projects | /r/Wayfire | 18 Feb 2023
    might be a small window when wayfire releases a version, before master identfies as the next release number. (see: https://github.com/WayfireWM/wayfire/blob/master/meson.build )
    3 projects | /r/Wayfire | 18 Feb 2023
    On GitHub, last version is 0.7.5.
    3 projects | /r/Wayfire | 18 Feb 2023
    So I try to find news about Wayfire but on the website the last annoucement concerns 0.7.0.
  • What is meant by a Fast OS?
    2 projects | /r/linux | 8 Dec 2022
    That said, many people prefer "fluid" or "smooth" over quick. Or remember these 3D cube or lamp effects, e.g. as redone in https://wayfire.org/ ? Definitely not quick, but people like those.
  • Alternatives to gnome-shell
    5 projects | /r/gnome | 25 Sep 2022

What are some alternatives?

When comparing polybar and wayfire you can also consider the following projects:

sway - i3-compatible Wayland compositor

Hyprland - Hyprland is a highly customizable dynamic tiling Wayland compositor that doesn't sacrifice on its looks.

polybar-themes - A huge collection of polybar themes with different styles, colors and variants.

tint2

river - [mirror] A dynamic tiling Wayland compositor

i3blocks-contrib - Official repository for community contributed blocklets

nerd-fonts - Iconic font aggregator, collection, & patcher. 3,600+ icons, 50+ patched fonts: Hack, Source Code Pro, more. Glyph collections: Font Awesome, Material Design Icons, Octicons, & more

manjaro-sway - manjaro linux with wayland 🖼, sway 🌴 and a lot of ♥

conky - Light-weight system monitor for X, Wayland, and other things, too

rofi - Rofi: A window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement

pywal - 🎨 Generate and change color-schemes on the fly.

dwl - dwm for Wayland - ARCHIVE: development has moved to Codeberg