Alternatives to xmobar
A minimalist text-based status bar for X11, written in Haskell and often paired with xmonad. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
xmobar
A minimalist text-based status bar for X11, written in Haskell and often paired with xmonad.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as xmobar.
Polybar
Build a configurable status bar for an X11 desktop.
Polybar is a configurable X11 status bar with modules and custom scripts, offering more graphical styling than text-based xmobar without Haskell configuration.
Lemonbar
Featherweight, scriptable status bar for X11 built on xcb.
Lemonbar is a featherweight xcb-based X11 bar with no built-in configuration, so everything is scripted externally rather than set through plugins.
Tint2
Lightweight panel and taskbar for Linux and BSD window managers.
Tint2 is a lightweight Linux and BSD panel and taskbar configured through a plain text file, adding a taskbar rather than only a text status line.
Eww
Create custom desktop widgets using declarative configuration and styling.
Eww builds custom panels and widgets from declarative configuration and styling under MIT, requiring you to write widget configuration and maintain its scripts.
Waybar
Add a customizable status bar to compatible Wayland desktops.
Waybar is a customizable status bar for Wayland compositors rather than X11, with workspace and system-status modules and custom styling.
Quickshell
A QtQuick toolkit for building your own status bars, widgets, lockscreens and desktop shells.
Quickshell is a QtQuick toolkit for building bars, widgets and whole shells, requiring QML rather than Haskell and offering flexible layouts and animation.
Ironbar
A customisable GTK4 status bar for Wayland compositors, written in Rust.
Ironbar is a GTK4 status bar written in Rust for Wayland only, with no X11 support, scaling from minimal to feature-rich setups.
Also worth comparing
These listings name xmobar as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Conky
Display live system information in configurable desktop widgets.
xmobar is a text-based X11 status bar often paired with xmonad, with plugins for system information and configuration in Haskell rather than desktop widgets.
Vitals
A GNOME Shell extension that shows temperatures, voltages, fan speeds, memory and CPU load in the top bar.
xmobar is a text status bar for X11 with plugins for system information, suited to xmonad setups and configured in Haskell.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
xmonad
A dynamically tiling X11 window manager that is written and configured in Haskell.
dwm
Use a small dynamic window manager for X11 with tiling and floating layouts.
spectrwm
A small dynamic tiling window manager for X11 that aims to stay out of the way.
rofi
A keyboard-driven window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement for Linux desktops.
picom
A lightweight standalone compositor for X11 that adds shadows, transparency, blur, fading and animations.
StumpWM
A keyboard-driven tiling window manager for X11, written in and extensible with Common Lisp.
