This bar project aims to create a highly flexible, customizable, fast and powerful status bar replacement for users that like playing around with shell scripts.

More example setups here.

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
  • Features
  • Installation
    • Stable Version
    • Plugins and Fonts
  • Global configuration of the bar
  • Items and their properties
    • Adding items to sketchybar
    • Changing item properties
    • Changing the default values for all further items
  • Components -- Special Items with special properties
    • Data Graph -- Draws an arbitrary graph into the bar
    • Space -- Associate mission control spaces with an item
    • Item Bracket -- Group Items in e.g. colored sections
    • Item Alias -- Mirror items of the original macOS status bar into sketchybar
  • Popup Menus
  • Batching of configuration commands
  • Events and Scripting
    • Creating custom events
    • Triggering custom events
    • Forcing all shell scripts to run and the bar to refresh
  • Querying
    • Bar Properties
    • Item Properties
    • Default Properties
    • Event Properties
  • Item Reordering
  • Moving Items to specific positions
  • Item Cloning
  • Renaming Items
  • Removing Items
  • Performance optimizations
  • Credits

Features

• Performance friendly
• No accessibility permissions needed
• Fully scriptable
• Highly configurable
• Supports drawing native macOS menu bar applications
• Powerful event system (items can subscribe to many system events)
• Popup Menus
• Mouse Support
• Many visual features
• Support for graphs
• Per display and per space individualization

The configuration of the bar takes place in a confiuration file where almost everything can be configured. Basically, the bar itself is a rectangle that can hold arbitrarily many items, which can be configured to do awesome stuff. An item will occupy a space in the bar and can be equipped to show an icon and a label. The icon and label can be changed through scripts that can be attached to the item. It is also possible to subscribe an item to certain events for their script execution action, which makes very powerful items possible. Furthermore, an item can be assigned to mission control spaces or displays, such that they only show on a certain space or display, which makes multi-desktop configuration of the bar possible and opens the possibility to create individualized bar configuration on a per display and per space level. These simple ingredients make items almost endlessly customizable and can be used to display arbitrary information and perform useful actions. For some examples see my sketchybarrc and the plugins folder.

Some special features can not be accomplished with a simple item, this is where the components come into play. They basically are items with extra steps. They contain all the properties a regular item does, but they can do specialized tasks a simple item can not. For example, there is a graph component, which can be used to display graphs in the bar.

For more details on how the configuration works, see the configuration section below.

Installation

Stable Version

brew tap FelixKratz/formulae
brew install sketchybar

Do not forget to copy the example configuration files to your home directory (the brew installation specific commands are listed in the caveats section after the brew install is finished).

Run the bar via

brew services start sketchybar

Plugins and Fonts

When you use additional plugins, make sure that they are referenced in the rc with the correct path and that they are made executable via

chmod +x name/of/plugin.sh

The default plugin folder is located in ~/.config/sketchybar/plugins. All plugins must work with absolute paths because relative paths will not be resolved correctly. Have a look at the discussion about plugins and share your own if you want to. You should of course vet the code from all plugins before executing them to make sure they are not harming your computer.

If you have problems with missing fonts you might need to install the Hack Nerd Font:

brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts
brew install --cask font-hack-nerd-font

Global configuration of the bar

For an example configuration see the supplied default sketchybarrc. The configuration file resides in ~/.config/sketchybar/, where everything can be freely configured. It is also possible to play around with properties in a terminal and change them while the bar is running, once you find a fitting value you can include it in the sketchybarrc file such that the configuration is restored on restart. The global bar properties can be configured by invoking:

sketchybar --bar <setting>=<value> ... <setting>=<value>

where possible settings are:

<setting>	<value>	default	description
color	<argb_hex>	0x44000000	Color of the bar
border_color	<argb_hex>	0xffff0000	Color of the bars border
position	top, bottom	top	Position of the bar on the screen
height	<integer>	25	Height of the bar
margin	<integer>	0	Margin around the bar
y_offset	<integer>	0	Vertical offset of the bar from its default position
corner_radius	<positive_integer>	0	Corner radius of the bar
border_width	<positive_integer>	0	Border width of the bars border
blur_radius	<positive_integer>	0	Blur radius applied to the background of the bar
padding_left	<positive_integer>	0	Padding between the left bar border and the leftmost item
padding_right	<positive_integer>	0	Padding between the right bar border and the rightmost item
display	main, all	all	Display to show the bar on
hidden	<boolean>	off	If the bar is hidden
topmost	<boolean>	off	If the bar should be drawn on top of everything
font_smoothing	<boolean>	off	If fonts should be smoothened
shadow	<boolean>	off	If the bar should draw a shadow

Items and their properties

Items are the main building blocks of sketchybar and can be configured in a number of ways. Items have the following basic structure:

Adding items to sketchybar

sketchybar --add item <name> <position>

where the <name> should not contain whitespaces (or must be quoted), it can be used to further configure the item. The <position> is the placement in the bar and can be either left, right or center. The items will appear in the bar in the order in which they are added, but can be moved later on.

<name>	<string>
<position>	left, right, center, (q, e #120)

Changing item properties

sketchybar --set <name> <property>=<value> ... <property>=<value>

where the name is used to target the item with this name. (The name can be a regular expression inside of two '/': /<regex>/)

A list of properties available to the set command is listed below (components might have additional properties, see the respective component section for them):

• Geometry Properties:

<property>	<value>	default	description
position	left, right, center		Position of the item in the bar
associated_space	<positive_integer list>	0	Spaces to show this item on
associated_display	<positive_integer list>	0	Displays to show this item on
y_offset	<integer>	0	Vertical offset applied to the text
width	<positive_integer> or dynamic	dynamic	Makes the item use a fixed width given in points
align	center, left, right	left	Aligns the item content in its container when it has a fixed width larger than the content width

• Drawing properties:

<property>	<value>	default	description
drawing	<boolean>	on	If the item should be drawn into the bar
lazy	<boolean>	off	Changes do not trigger a redraw of the bar, item is refreshed when the bar is redrawn anyways

• Icon properties:

<property>	<value>	default	description
icon	<string>		Icon of the item
icon.<text_property>			Icons support all text properties

• Label properties:

<property>	<value>	default	description
label	<string>		Label of the item
label.<text_property>			Labels support all text properties

• Scripting properties:

<property>	<value>	default	description
script	<path>, <string>		Script to run on an event
click_script	<path>, <string>		Script to run on a mouse click (Difference to mouse.clicked event: #109)
update_freq	<positive_integer>	1	Time in seconds between routine script executions
updates	<boolean>, when_shown	on	If and when the item updates e.g. via script execution

• Text properties:

<text_property>	<value>	default	description
drawing	<boolean>	on	If the text is rendered
highlight	<boolean>	off	If the text uses the highlight_color or the regular color
color	<argb_hex>	0xffffffff	Color used to render the text
highlight_color	<argb_hex>	0xff000000	Highlight color of the text (e.g. for active space icon
padding_left	<integer>	0	Padding to the left of the text
padding_right	<integer>	0	Padding to the right of the text
y_offset	<integer>	0	Vertical offset applied to the text
width	<positive_integer> or dynamic	dynamic	Makes the text use a fixed width given in points
align	center, left, right	left	Aligns the text in its container when it has a fixed width larger than the content width
background.<background_property>			Texts support all background properties
shadow.<shadow_property>			Texts support all shadow properties

• Background properties:

<background_property>	<value>	default	description
drawing	<boolean>	off	If the background should be rendered
color	<argb_hex>	0x00000000	Fill color of the background
border_color	<argb_hex>	0x00000000	Color of the backgrounds border
border_width	<positive_integer>	0	Width of the background border
height	<positive_integer>	0	Overrides the height of the background
corner_radius	<positive_integer>	0	Corner radius of the background
padding_left	<integer>	0	Padding to the left of the background
padding_right	<integer>	0	Padding to the right of the background
y_offset	<integer>	0	Vertical offset applied to the background
image	<path>		The path to a png or jpeg image file
image.<image_property>			Backgrounds support all image properties
shadow.<shadow_property>			Backgrounds support all shadow properties

• Image properties (Can be resource intensive if many large images are drawn):

<image_property>	<value>	default	description
drawing	<boolean>	off	If the image should draw
scale	<positive_integer>	0	The scale factor that should be applied to the image

• Shadow properties:

<shadow_property>	<value>	default	description
drawing	<boolean>	off	If the shadow should be drawn
color	<argb_hex>	0xff000000	Color of the shadow
angle	<positive_integer>	30	Angle of the shadow
distance	<positive_integer>	5	Distance of the shadow

Changing the default values for all further items

It is possible to change the defaults at every point in the configuration. All item created after changing the defaults will inherit these properties from the default item.

sketchybar --default <property>=<value> ... <property>=<value>

this works for all item properties.

Type nomenclature

type	values
<boolean>	on, off, yes, no, true, false, 1, 0, toggle
<argb_hex>	Color as an 8 digit hex with alpha, red, green and blue channels
<path>	An absolute file path
<string>	Any UTF-8 string or symbol
<float>	A floating point number
<integer>	An integer
<positive_integer>	A positive integer
<positive_integer list>	A comma separated list of positive integers

Components -- Special Items with special properties

Components are essentially items, but with special properties. Currently there are the components (more details in the corresponding sections below):

• graph: showing a graph,
• space: representing a mission control space
• bracket: brackets together other items
• alias: a default menu bar item

Data Graph -- Draws an arbitrary graph into the bar

sketchybar --add graph <name> <position> <width in points>

Additional graph properties:

• graph.color: color of the associated graph
• graph.fill_color: optional property to override the automatically calculated fill color of the graph
• graph.line_width: sets the line width of the associated graph

<property>	<value>	default	description
graph.color	<argb_hex>	0xcccccc	Color of the graph line
graph.fill_color	<argb_hex>	0xcccccc	Fill color of the graph
graph.line_width	<float>	0.5	Width of the line in points

Push data points into the graph via:

sketchybar --push <name> <data point>

Space -- Associate mission control spaces with an item

sketchybar --add space <name> <position>

The space component overrides the definition of the following properties and they must be set to correctly associate a mission control space with this item:

• associated_space: Which space this item represents
• associated_display: On which display the associated_space is shown. The space component has additional variables available in scripts:

$SELECTED
$SID
$DID

where $SELECTED has the value true if the associated space is selected and false if the selected space is not selected, while $SID holds the space id and $DID the display id.

By default the space component invokes the following script:

sketchybar --set $NAME icon.highlight=$SELECTED

which you can freely configure to your liking by supplying a different script to the space component:

sketchybar --set <name> script=<script/path>

For performance reasons the space script is only run on change.

Item Bracket -- Group Items in e.g. colored sections

It is possible to bracket together items via the command (see this discussion for an example):

sketchybar --add bracket <name> <first item name> ... <n-th item name>

The first item must always be the one listed earliest in the config. It is now possible to set properties for the bracket, just as for any item or component. Brackets currently only support all background features. E.g., if I wanted a colored background around all my space components (which are named code, writing, reading and entertainment) I would set it up like this:

sketchybar --add bracket primary_spaces code                        \
                                        writing                     \
                                        reading                     \
                                        entertainment               \
                                                                    \
           --set         primary_spaces background.color=0xffffffff \
                                        background.corner_radius=4  \
                                        background.height=20

this draws a white background below all my space components. I plan to expand the capability of item brackets significantly in the future.

Item Alias -- Mirror items of the original macOS status bar into sketchybar

It is possible to create an alias for default menu bar items (such as MeetingBar, etc.) in sketchybar. The default menu bar can be set to autohide and this should still work.

It is now possible to create an alias of a default menu bar item with the following syntax:

sketchybar --add alias <application_name> <position>

this operation requires screen capture permissions, which should be granted in the system preferences. This will put the default item into sketchybar. Aliases currently are not clickable but can be modified with all the options available for simple items.

The command can be overloaded by providing a window_owner and a window_name

sketchybar --add alias <window_owner>,<window_name> <position>

this way the default system items can also be slurped into sketchybar, e.g.:
"Control Center,Bluetooth"
"Control Center,WiFi"

Or the individual widgets of Stats:
"Stats,CPU_Mini"
etc...

All further default menu items currently available on your system can be found via the command:

sketchybar --query default_menu_items

You can override the color of an alias via the property (HEAD only):

sketchybar --set <name> alias.color=<rgba_hex>

Popup Menus

Popup menus are a powerful way to make further items accessible in a small popup window below any bar item. Every item has a popup available with the properties:

<property>	<value>	default	description
popup.drawing	<boolean>	off	If the popup should be rendered
popup.horizontal	<boolean>	off	If the popup should render horizontally
popup.height	<positive_integer>	bar height	The vertical spacing between items in a popup (Only on HEAD)
popup.y_offset	<integer>	0	Vertical offset applied to the popup
popup.align	left, right, center	left	Alignment of the popup with its parent item in the bar
popup.background.<background_property>			Popups have a background and support all properties

Items can be added to a popup menu by setting the position of those items to popup.<name> where <name> is the name of the item containing the popup. You can find a demo implementation of this here.

Batching of configuration commands

It is possible to batch commands together into a single call to sketchybar, this can be helpful to keep the configuration file a bit cleaner and also to reduce startup times. Assume 5 individual configuration calls to sketchybar:

sketchybar --bar position=top
sketchybar --bar margin=5
sketchybar --add item demo left
sketchybar --set demo label=Hello
sketchybar --subscribe demo system_woke

after each configuration command the bar is redrawn (if needed), thus it is more perfomant to append these calls into a single command like so:

sketchybar --bar position=top           \
                 margin=5               \
           --add item demo left         \
           --set demo label=Hello       \
           --subscribe demo system_woke

The backslash at the end of the first 4 lines is the default bash way to join lines together and should not be followed by a whitespace.

Events and Scripting

Any item can subscribe to arbitrary events, when the event happens, all items subscribed to the event will execute their script. This can be used to create more reactive and performant items which react to events rather than polling for a change.

sketchybar --subscribe <name> <event> ... <event>

where the events are:

<event>	description
front_app_switched	When the front application changes (not triggered if a different window of the same app is focused)
space_change	When the active mission control space changes
display_change	When the active display is changed
system_will_sleep	When the system prepares to sleep
system_woke	When the system has awaken from sleep
mouse.entered	When the mouse enters over an item
mouse.exited	When the mouse leaves an item
mouse.clicked	When an item is clicked

When an item is subscribed to these events the script is run and it gets passed the $SENDER variable, which holds exactly the above names, to distinguish between the different events. It is thus possible to have a script that reacts to each event differently e.g. via a switch for the $SENDER variable in the script.

Alternatively a fixed update_freq can be --set, such that the event is routinely run to poll for change.

When an item invokes a script, the script has access to some environment variables, such as:

$NAME
$SENDER

Where $NAME is the name of the item that has invoked the script and $SENDER is the reason why the script is executed.

If an item is clicked the script has access to the additional variables:

$BUTTON
$MODIFIER

where the $BUTTON can be left, right or other and specifies the mouse button that was used to click the item, while the $MODIFIER is either shift, ctrl, alt or cmd and specifies the modifier key held down while clicking the item.

Some events send additional information in the $INFO variable

All scripts are forced to terminate after 60 seconds and do not run while the system is sleeping.

Creating custom events

This allows to define events which are triggered by a different application (see Trigger custom events). Items can also subscribe to these events for their script execution.

sketchybar --add event <name> [optional: <NSDistributedNotificationName>]

Optional: You can subscribe to the notifications sent to the NSDistributedNotificationCenter e.g. the notification Spotify sends on track change: com.spotify.client.PlaybackStateChanged (example), or the notification sent by the system when a bluetooth device connected, or disconnected: com.apple.bluetooth.state (example) to create more responsive items. Custom events that subscribe to NSDistributedNotificationCenter notifications will receive additional notification information in the $INFO variable if available.

Triggering custom events

This triggers a custom event that has been added before

sketchybar --trigger <event> [Optional: <envvar>=<value> ... <envvar>=<value>]

Optionaly you can add environment variables to the trigger command witch are passed to the script, e.g.:

sketchybar --trigger demo VAR=Test

will trigger the demo event and $VAR will be available as an environment variable in the scripts that this event invokes. This could be used to link the powerful event system of yabai to sketchybar by triggering the custom action via a yabai event.

Forcing all shell scripts to run and the bar to refresh

sketchybar --update

Querying

SketchyBar can be queried for information about a number of things.

Bar Properties

Information about the bar can be queried via:

sketchybar --query bar

The output is a json structure containing relevant information about the configuration settings of the bar.

Item Properties

Information about an item can be queried via:

sketchybar --query <name>

The output is a json structure containing relevant information about the configuration of the item.

Default Properties

Information about the current defaults.

sketchybar --query defaults

Event Properties

Information about the events.

sketchybar --query events

Item Reordering

It is possible to reorder items by invoking

sketchybar --reorder <name> ... <name>

where a new order can be supplied for arbitrary items. Only the specified items get reordered, by swapping them around, everything else stays the same. E.g. if you want to swap two items simply call

sketchybar --reorder <item 1> <item 2>

Moving Items to specific positions

It is possible to move items and order them next to a reference item.
Move Item to appear before item :

sketchybar --move <name> before <reference name>

Move Item to appear after item :

sketchybar --move <name> after <reference name>

Item Cloning

It is possible to clone another item instead of adding a completely blank item

sketchybar --clone <name> <parent name> [optional: before/after]

the new item will inherit all properties of the parent item. The optional before and after modifiers can be used to move the item before, or after the parent, equivalently to a --move command.

Renaming Items

It is possible to rename any item. The new name should obviously not be in use by another item:

sketchybar --rename <old name> <new name>

Removing Items

It is possible to remove any item by invoking, the item will be completely destroyed and removed from brackets

sketchybar --remove <name>

the <name> can again be a regex: /<regex>/.

Performance optimizations

SketchyBar can be configured to have a very small performance footprint. In the following I will highlight some optimizations that can be used to reduce the footprint further.

• Batch together configuration commands where ever possible.
• Set items to be lazy, e.g. I have an alias component in my bar that updates every 2 seconds, thus I set all non-reactive items to lazy=on, and only the ones that should react to change instantaneously to lazy=off.
• Set updates=when_shown for items that do not need to run their script if they are not rendered.
• Reduce the update_freq of scripts and aliases and use event-driven scripting when ever possible.
• Do not add aliases to apps that are not always running, otherwise sketchybar searches for them continously.

Credits

This project was forked from spacebar and completely reimagined and rewritten.
The original idea is based on the status bar that was included in yabai before getting removed.