screens.rst

Screens

The screens configuration variable is where the physical screens, their associated bars, and the widgets contained within the bars are defined (see ref-widgets for a listing of available widgets).

Example

Tying together screens, bars and widgets, we get something like this:

from libqtile.config import Screen
from libqtile import bar, widget

screens = [
    Screen(
        bottom=bar.Bar([
            widget.GroupBox(),
            widget.WindowName()
            ], 30),
        ),
    Screen(
        bottom=bar.Bar([
            widget.GroupBox(),
            widget.WindowName()
            ], 30),
        )
    ]

Bars support both solid background colors and gradients by supplying a list of colors that make up a linear gradient. For example, bar.Bar(..., background="#000000") will give you a black back ground (the default), while bar.Bar(..., background=["#000000", "#FFFFFF"]) will give you a background that fades from black to white.

Bars (and widgets) also support transparency by adding an alpha value to the desired color. For example, bar.Bar(..., background="#00000000") will result in a fully transparent bar. Widget contents will not be impacted i.e. this is different to the opacity parameter which sets the transparency of the entire window.

Note

In X11 backends, transparency will be disabled in a bar if the background color is fully opaque.

Users can add borders to the bar by using the border_width and border_color parameters. Providing a single value sets the value for all four sides while sides can be customised individually by setting four values in a list (top, right, bottom, left) e.g. border_width=[2, 0, 2, 0] would draw a border 2 pixels thick on the top and bottom of the bar.

Multiple Screens

You will see from the example above that screens is a list of individual Screen objects. The order of the screens in this list should match the order of screens as seen by your display server.

X11

You can view the current order of your screens by running xrandr --listmonitors.

Examples of how to set the order of your screens can be found on the Arch wiki.

Wayland

The Wayland backend supports the wlr-output-management protocol for configuration of outputs by tools such as Kanshi.

Fake Screens

instead of using the variable screens the variable fake_screens can be used to set split a physical monitor into multiple screens. They can be used like this:

from libqtile.config import Screen
from libqtile import bar, widget

# screens look like this
#     600         300
#  |-------------|-----|
#  |          480|     |580
#  |   A         |  B  |
#  |----------|--|     |
#  |       400|--|-----|
#  |   C      |        |400
#  |----------|   D    |
#     500     |--------|
#                 400
#
# Notice there is a hole in the middle
# also D goes down below the others

fake_screens = [
  Screen(
      bottom=bar.Bar(
          [
              widget.Prompt(),
              widget.Sep(),
              widget.WindowName(),
              widget.Sep(),
              widget.Systray(),
              widget.Sep(),
              widget.Clock(format='%H:%M:%S %d.%m.%Y')
          ],
          24,
          background="#555555"
      ),
      x=0,
      y=0,
      width=600,
      height=480
  ),
  Screen(
      top=bar.Bar(
          [
              widget.GroupBox(),
              widget.WindowName(),
              widget.Clock()
          ],
          30,
      ),
      x=600,
      y=0,
      width=300,
      height=580
  ),
  Screen(
      top=bar.Bar(
          [
              widget.GroupBox(),
              widget.WindowName(),
              widget.Clock()
          ],
          30,
      ),
      x=0,
      y=480,
      width=500,
      height=400
  ),
  Screen(
      top=bar.Bar(
          [
              widget.GroupBox(),
              widget.WindowName(),
              widget.Clock()
          ],
          30,
      ),
      x=500,
      y=580,
      width=400,
      height=400
  ),
]

Third-party bars

There might be some reasons to use third-party bars. For instance you can come from another window manager and you have already configured dzen2, xmobar, or something else. They definitely can be used with Qtile too. In fact, any additional configurations aren't needed. Just run the bar and qtile will adapt.

Reference