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Ridwan Rawriet

Member

Registered: 2021-09-28

Posts: 33

[SOLVED] Can't enable transparency in i3bar following the user-guide.

According to this section of the official documentation, I edited the configuration file as following:

bar {

i3bar_command i3bar --transparency
status_command i3status
colors {
background #00000000
statusline #ffffff
separator #666666

focused_workspace #4c7899 #285577 #ffffff
active_workspace #333333 #5f676a #ffffff
inactive_workspace #333333 #222222 #888888
urgent_workspace #2f343a #900000 #ffffff
binding_mode #2f343a #900000 #ffffff
}
}

Most probably I misunderstood the documentation. Please point out my error.

Last edited by Ridwan Rawriet (2022-01-28 11:59:57)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,690

Re: [SOLVED] Can't enable transparency in i3bar following the user-guide.

Are you running a compositor?

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Ridwan Rawriet

Member

Registered: 2021-09-28

Posts: 33

Re: [SOLVED] Can't enable transparency in i3bar following the user-guide.

No, the docs don't tell to. Is a compositor mandatory for transparency in i3? Doesn't i3 natively support it? Then why isn't there any mention of it in the docs? Or is transparency a broken feature that can be re-implemented by using a compositor?

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,169

Re: [SOLVED] Can't enable transparency in i3bar following the user-guide.

You need a compositor to apply the alpha channel of a window, this has nothing to do w/ the client (in this case i3bar) and it *cannot* "natively" support that this way.
Some window managers (typically of the bigger DEs) have a built-in compositor, but i3 does not - I guess in part because it makes less sense w/ a tiling WM.

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Ridwan Rawriet

Member

Registered: 2021-09-28

Posts: 33

Re: [SOLVED] Can't enable transparency in i3bar following the user-guide.

Thanks for explaining.