awesome-wm-widgets/_widgets/brightness-widget.md

layout
page

Brightness widget

This widget represents current brightness level:

Customization

It is possible to customize widget by providing a table with all or some of the following config parameters:

Name	Default	Description
get_brightness_cmd	light -G	Get current screen brightness
inc_brightness_cmd	light -A 5	Increase brightness
dec_brightness_cmd	light -U 5	Decrease brightness
path_to_icon	/usr/share/icons/Arc/status/symbolic/display-brightness-symbolic.svg	Path to the icon
font	Play 9	Font

Example:

brightness_widget({
    get_brightness_cmd = 'xbacklight -get',
    inc_brightness_cmd = 'xbacklight -inc 5',
    dec_brightness_cmd = 'xbacklight -dec 5'
})

Installation

First you need to get the current brightness level. There are two options:

• using xbacklight command (depending on your video card (I guess) it may or may not work)

  To check if it works install xbackligth and check if it works:

  sudo apt-get install xbacklight
  xbacklight -get
  

  If there is no output it means that it doesn't work, but there is a second option:

• using light command

  Install it from this git repo: github.com/haikarainen/light and check if it works but running

  git clone https://github.com/haikarainen/light.git && \
  cd ./light && \
  sudo make && sudo make install \
  light -G
  49.18
  

Then clone this repo under ~/.config/awesome/:

git clone https://github.com/streetturtle/awesome-wm-widgets.git ~/.config/awesome/

Require widget at the beginning of rc.lua:

local brightness_widget = require("awesome-wm-widgets.brightness-widget.brightness")

Add widget to the tasklist:

s.mytasklist, -- Middle widget
    { -- Right widgets
        layout = wibox.layout.fixed.horizontal,
        ...
        -- default
        brightness_widget(),
        -- or customized
        brightness_widget({
          get_brightness_cmd = 'xbacklight -get',
          inc_brightness_cmd = 'xbacklight -inc 5',
          dec_brightness_cmd = 'xbacklight -dec 5'
        })      
    }
        ...

Controls

In order to change brightness by shortcuts you can add them to the globalkeys table in the rc.lua:

awful.key({ modkey         }, ";", function () awful.spawn("light -A 5") end, {description = "increase brightness", group = "custom"}),
awful.key({ modkey, "Shift"}, ";", function () awful.spawn("light -U 5") end, {description = "decrease brightness", group = "custom"}),

On laptop you can use XF86MonBrightnessUp and XF86MonBrightnessDown keys.