How to display once on a changing, primary monitor output?

[tylerjl]

Hi! Thanks for your work on ironbar, looks great.

I'm attempting to migrate from eww (it's sort of a languishing project) and there's one feature I can't figure out how to replicate: I switch between a single integrated laptop display and multiple monitors and I leverage the eww open --screen <output> command to change where my bars are (from the integrated screen to my "new" primary output when attaching a new monitor output).

Is there any way to replicate this behavior in ironbar? I understand how to constraint a bar to one output but I'm unsure how to handle changing which output a bar should live on throughout the course of monitor changes. I suppose one method would be to actively change the configuration file based on reactivity to output events, but I wanted to check and see whether there were any more elegant alternatives to that.

[JakeStanger]

Hey, there's no native feature for that at the moment.

Potentially a more elegant solution if you want the bar to only show on one screen at a time, is to define two bars (one per screen) in the same config, and then use IPC to show/hide them.

ironbar bar show bar-1
ironbar bar hide bar-2

[tylerjl]

Got it, thank you. I assume that writing a configuration file in corn might make this a little easier, too (assuming I want to set the same bar in different outputs).

I wonder if there's any sort of wayland protocol for "primary" monitor like X11 had. Today I bridge the concept of a primary display by calculating the size of all of my outputs when kanshi runs and open opening my bars on the largest overall display but a primary monitor would make this a lot less manual.

[JakeStanger]

I assume that writing a configuration file in corn might make this a little easier, too (assuming I want to set the same bar in different outputs).

Yes, you can write the bar as a single input. My own config is something like:

let {
  $clock = { type = "clock" }

  $bar = { end = [ $clock ] }
} in {
  monitors.DP-1 = { name = "bar-1" ..$bar }
  monitors.DP-2 = { name = "bar-2" ..$bar }
}

I wonder if there's any sort of wayland protocol for "primary" monitor like X11 had

There isn't anything standardised. It's down to the compositor to define this, and most don't as far as I know.