Waybar - Privacy Dots

A privacy-first module for your status bar.
Displays the status of your microphone, camera, and location with beautiful colored dots.

Capabilities

• Mic Status: Shows a green dot when any microphone is in use.
• Cam Status: Shows an orange dot when any camera is active.
• Loc Status: Shows a blue dot when location services are in use.
• Easy to Customize: Add new statuses or change colors easily. The functionality is handled by a simple Bash script, and styling is managed with CSS.

Defaults

The backend script polls status information every 3 seconds by default.
It provides formatted text, tooltips, and styling classes, which waybar uses to render the colored dots as shown below.
Colors and polling interval are configurable.

Installation

Make sure waybar is installed on your system, then follow these steps to set up the privacy dots module:

1. Create the scripts directory in your waybar config folder:

mkdir -p ~/.config/waybar/scripts

2. Then download and locate the privacydots.sh script in the scripts folder:

curl -o ~/.config/waybar/scripts/privacydots.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alibaghernejad/waybar-privacy-dots/main/config/waybar/scripts/privacydots.sh
chmod +x ~/.config/waybar/scripts/privacydots.sh

3. Add the privacydots module to your waybar configuration file (~/.config/waybar/config). Here's a sample configuration:

{
    "custom/privacydots": {
        "exec": "~/.config/waybar/scripts/privacydots.sh",
        "return-type": "json",
        "interval": 3,
        "format": "{text}",
        "tooltip": true,
        "escape": false,
        "markup": "pango"
    }
}

You can add this module to any section (modules-left, modules-center, or modules-right) according to your preference. For example, to add it to the center:

"modules-center": ["clock", "custom/privacydots"]

A complete example configuration might look like this sample configuration.

Optional Styling

By default, colors are defined in the privacydots.sh script. However, you can customize the appearance of the dots by adding CSS styles.

Add these optional styles to your ~/.config/waybar/style.css: A complete example styling file is available in the repository here.

Add these optional styles to your ~/.config/waybar/style.css:

#custom-privacydots {
  padding: 0 6px;
  /* size of the dots */
  font-size: 9px;
  /* space between dots */
  letter-spacing: 1px;
  /* dots colored ring */
  /* comment/uncomment to enable/disable the colored ring. */
  /* text-shadow:
      -1px -1px 0 #000000,
       1px -1px 0 #000000,
      -1px  1px 0 #000000,
       1px  1px 0 #000000; */
}