ixwindow – icon xwindow module for Polybar

About

ixwindow is an enhanced version of standard xwindow polybar module. The main feature is icon for active window, but it also allows you more customization of printing window info. This is what ixwindow looks like in action:

Note: basically, it doesn't depend on polybar one bit, it can be used with any other bar as well, you just need to implement the same behavior, as polybar's tail = true.

Dependencies

• bash
• bspc
• xdotool
• xdo (can be replaced with xdotool)
• imagemagick (for converting .png icons to .jpg)
• g++ (for compiling polybar-xwindow-icon)
• openvc (for debian-based systems you can install it by running `sudo apt install libopencv-dev")

Installation

Just modify install.sh script for your case and run it. Things to modify:

• background color of polybar bar
• size of icon
• coordinates for icon
• path to polybar-icons folder (note: it makes sense to keep it around .config/polybar folder, so you won't lose your custom icons, if you have them)
• change GAP constant in ixwindow script

You will also need to add the following to your polybar config file:

[module/ixwindow]
type = custom/script
exec = /path/to/ixwindow
tail = true

and put it somewhere on bar, for example, add it right next to bspwm: modules-left = bspwm ixwindow.

Note: If you want to reinstall ixwindow, like if you need to change the configuration of the module, you just need to run install.sh with the updated parameters. But old icons won't remove, so if you need to delete them, you have to do that manually.

Note: For relaunching polybar, you will need to use something like killall polybar && launchpolybar &, so the previous instance of ixwindow will be killed (I am currently trying to find a workaround for it)

Generating icons

ixwindow uses the output of xprop for generating icons automatically. Most of the times it works, but for some applications, for example, Spotify, it doesn't work. Then, if you want to have an icon for these applications, you have to add them yourself.

Adding custom icons

Sometimes it's not possible to get icon using xprop, (for example, it's the case with Spotify), then you have to add them manually to your polybar-icons folder. To do that, you need to have .png version of the icon, named as WM_CLASS (you can find it by running xprop WM_CLASS and selecting your app). Then you run the following command (requires imagemagick), (where you replace "$size" and "$color" with the ones from your install.sh script):

convert Spotify.png -resize "$size"x"$size" -background "$color" -flatten -alpha off Spotify.jpg

Note: This method can be used for replacing default icons, generated with xprop.

Known issues & limitations

• Lack of png support, but replacing jpg with png would require compositor as the dependency as well
• Untested on multimonitors system
• Manual specification, but seems to be unfixable at this point, since polybar doesn't support inserting images into bar for now
• Works only with bspwm
• Not working with relaunched polybar without killall polybar

Thanks

Inspired by

https://github.com/MateoNitro550/xxxwindowPolybarModule

With a great help of

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54513419/putting-image-into-a-window-in-x11
• https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/48860/how-to-dump-the-icon-of-a-running-x-program