POLYBAR-MSG(1)

💅 NAME 💅

polybar-msg — the little messenger bestie that sends IPC messages to polybar, no cap 🫶

okay so real quick: this is from the Polybar User Manual, and it's literally the glow-up you needed if you've ever wanted to talk to your bar like it's your group chat ✨

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

polybar-msg [OPTIONS] action action-string
polybar-msg [OPTIONS] action module action [data]
polybar-msg [OPTIONS] cmd command

three whole ways to slide into polybar's DMs, pick your fighter 👑

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So polybar lets the outside world control it — iconic behaviour honestly — through actions and commands. Here's the tea: actions are the ones that control individual modules, and commands control the bar itself. different tax brackets, y'know? 💀

The full IPC documentation is linked at the end of this document, go read it if you're nosy (affectionate). 🔗

Which actions you actually get depends on the target module — so like, it's giving "results may vary" but in a cute way. For actions, the payload is either a single action string, or the module name, the action name, and the optional data string, all specified separately. two formats, both slay 💖

And for polybar-msg to be able to send a message to a running polybar process, two things gotta be true:

• the bar must have IPC enabled, and
• both polybar-msg and polybar must run under the same user.

that's the vibe check. no shortcuts, sorry bestie 😭

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -h, --help — display help text and exit 🎀 the classic "wait what does this do again" button
• -p PID — send the message only to the polybar process running under the given process ID. If you don't specify it, the message gets sent to all running polybar processes. so like, -p is the "no, this one" of flags 🫶

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🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

polybar-msg cmd quit

Terminate all running polybar instances. bye bestie 👋 literally all of them, no survivors, it's giving closing time 💀

polybar-msg action mymodule module_hide

polybar-msg action "#mymodule.module_hide"

Both of these hide the module named mymodule. The first variant specifies the module and action names separately, the second uses an action string. same energy, different outfit 💅 the way that both work is honestly so convenient

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

Polybar was created by Michael Carlberg and is currently maintained by Patrick Ziegler. Contributors can be listed on GitHub — the whole squad, fr fr 🌈

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🙈 REPORTING BUGS 🙈

Found a bug? Report issues on GitHub <https://github.com/polybar/polybar> — don't suffer in silence, bestie, that's what the issue tracker is for 🐛💜

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• polybar(1), polybar(5)
• IPC documentation: <https://polybar.rtfd.org/en/stable/user/ipc.html>

go click the IPC docs, iykyk 📚

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⭐ COPYRIGHT ⭐

2016-2024, Michael Carlberg & contributors

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okay that's the whole page, you ate that ngl 🎀 this was polybar-msg, version 3.7.2, dated Sep 10, 2024 — mwah, go send some messages to your bar, she's waiting 💖🌸🦋