Ironbar
A customisable GTK4 status bar for Wayland compositors, written in Rust.
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About Ironbar
Ironbar is a status bar for Wayland desktops such as Sway and Hyprland. It is built with GTK4 and written in Rust, and is designed to scale from a lightweight minimal bar to a feature-rich one, depending on how you configure it.
The repository includes example configurations, Lua support, a systemd service file and Nix packaging. It is aimed at people who assemble their own desktop around a tiling Wayland compositor rather than using a full desktop environment.
Strengths
- Native GTK4 bar built for Wayland
- Scales from minimal to feature-rich setups
- Example configs, systemd service and Nix packaging included
Limitations
- Wayland only, no X11 support
- Configured through files, which takes time to learn
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree, with source code published on GitHub.
- License
- Open source, license not stated
- Developer
- Jake Stanger
- Platforms
- Linux
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Sway or Hyprland users building their own desktop bar
- Categories
- System utilities, Window tools
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to Ironbar
Compare allSoftware that can replace Ironbar for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
Waybar
Add a customizable status bar to compatible Wayland desktops.
Waybar is a customizable Wayland status bar with workspace and system-status modules, custom styling and scripts, open source under the MIT license.
nwg-panel
Add desktop panels to Sway and Hyprland using GTK.
nwg-panel provides GTK panels combining launchers, workspace controls and status modules, designed specifically for Sway and Hyprland.
Eww
Create custom desktop widgets using declarative configuration and styling.
Eww builds panels and other widgets from declarative configuration and styling, and you maintain the scripts that feed it information.
Quickshell
A QtQuick toolkit for building your own status bars, widgets, lockscreens and desktop shells.
Quickshell is a QtQuick toolkit for building bars, widgets, lockscreens and whole shells, requiring QML or an adopted community configuration rather than a ready-made bar.
AGS
Scaffolding CLI for building custom Linux desktop shells and widgets.
AGS is a scaffolding CLI for building fully custom Linux desktop shells and widgets, requiring scripting instead of configuring a ready-made bar.
Zebar
A tool for building custom taskbars, desktop widgets and popups on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Zebar builds custom taskbars, widgets and popups on Windows, macOS and Linux, and custom widgets require some coding or borrowed configurations.
Ironbar as an alternative
Listings that name Ironbar as an alternative.
xmobar
A minimalist text-based status bar for X11, written in Haskell and often paired with xmonad.
Ironbar is a GTK4 status bar written in Rust for Wayland only, with no X11 support, scaling from minimal to feature-rich setups.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
Sway
Use an i3-style tiling workflow on Wayland.
Hyprland
Arrange Linux application windows with a configurable tiling Wayland compositor.
niri
A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor that places windows in columns on an endless horizontal strip.
rofi
A keyboard-driven window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement for Linux desktops.
Polybar
Build a configurable status bar for an X11 desktop.
