Hide bar in i3wm

I love i3 window manager, and I love that you can create minimalists system, both in function and look. Recently I thought to myself, what if I hide polybar and there is only window on screen? But I don't want a permament hide, I need a shortcut to show it, if I need it.

Here comes in r/i3wm subreddit, and here is the solution. Note, that I use Manjaro and package names probably are different on other distros.

There is no built-in solution for this, but there is a tool, called xdo which let's you do some things with windows, and since polybar is a window, it works!

## 1. Install xdo and xprop

We need these packages.

$ sudo pacman -S xdo xorg-xprop

## 2. Create the bash script

Copy these lines in your favorite text editor and save it somewhere as a bash script (sh).

#!/bin/sh

xdo_path=$(which xdo) if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo "Cannot find \`xdo\` command." 1>&2 exit 1 fi

id=$(xdo id -N "Polybar")

if xprop -id $id | grep -q "Normal"; then xdo hide -N "Polybar" else xdo show -N "Polybar" fi

Make it executable:

$ chmod +x name_ofscript.sh

## 3. Edit your i3 config file, and assign a shortcut

For me it become $mod+p, but you can use it whatever you want and free.

bindsym $mod+p exec ~/.config/scripts/poly_hide.sh

Refresh your i3wm, and try it out! So far it works well, and instantly, even with using compton.