i3 FAQ - Individual question feed

warning popup when battery very low

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 23:04:36 +0000

So far so good with i3 :) There is one thing though: When running on battery, while I have now the color of the battery text in the status bar changing to red when the battery reaches the threshold configured, it sometimes escapes my attention... So I am thinking of having a popup or message appear when the battery reaches a certain threshold. What would be a way to do that (without having to load any gnome stuff)? Other suggestions instead of popup also welcome.

Comment by bruno.braga for
So far so good with i3 :)

There is one thing though: When running on battery, while I have now the color of the battery text in the status bar changing to red when the battery reaches the threshold configured, it sometimes escapes my attention...

So I am thinking of having a popup or message appear when the battery reaches a certain threshold.

What would be a way to do that (without having to load any gnome stuff)? Other suggestions instead of popup also welcome.

Wed, 01 May 2013 13:09:22 +0000

notify-osd works great for me (but I am on Ubuntu, loads of gnome in there). I tried dunst before but always failed to catch my attention, defeating the purpose of having this in the first place, so now I am back to notify-osd!

Answer by platz for
So far so good with i3 :)

There is one thing though: When running on battery, while I have now the color of the battery text in the status bar changing to red when the battery reaches the threshold configured, it sometimes escapes my attention...

So I am thinking of having a popup or message appear when the battery reaches a certain threshold.

What would be a way to do that (without having to load any gnome stuff)? Other suggestions instead of popup also welcome.

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:35:44 +0000

It's not a homegrown solution, but I just have `exec xfce4-power-manager` in my i3 config to start the power manager on startup. This will show a popup when battery is low. (I don't believe the xfce4 plugins have any gnome dependencies.)

Answer by fab for
So far so good with i3 :)

There is one thing though: When running on battery, while I have now the color of the battery text in the status bar changing to red when the battery reaches the threshold configured, it sometimes escapes my attention...

So I am thinking of having a popup or message appear when the battery reaches a certain threshold.

What would be a way to do that (without having to load any gnome stuff)? Other suggestions instead of popup also welcome.

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:00:59 +0000

This is what I finally did (it's from the archlinux form, topic id=133047, but I can't post links yet :( ) using the i3-nagbar! I actually need to tweek it because when the popups start to appear they are indeed nagging :) #! /bin/bash SLEEP_TIME=5 # Default time between checks. SAFE_PERCENT=30 # Still safe at this level. DANGER_PERCENT=15 # Warn when battery at this level. CRITICAL_PERCENT=5 # Hibernate when battery at this level. NAGBAR_PID=0 export DISPLAY=:0.0 function launchNagBar { i3-nagbar -m 'Battery low!' -b 'Hibernate!' 'pm-hibernate' >/dev/null 2>&1 & NAGBAR_PID=$! } function killNagBar { if [[ $NAGBAR_PID -ne 0 ]]; then ps -p $NAGBAR_PID | grep "i3-nagbar" if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]; then kill $NAGBAR_PID fi NAGBAR_PID=0 fi } while [ true ]; do killNagBar if [[ -n $(acpi -b | grep -i discharging) ]]; then rem_bat=$(acpi -b | grep -Eo "[0-9]+%" | grep -Eo "[0-9]+") if [[ $rem_bat -gt $SAFE_PERCENT ]]; then SLEEP_TIME=10 else SLEEP_TIME=5 if [[ $rem_bat -le $DANGER_PERCENT ]]; then SLEEP_TIME=2 launchNagBar fi if [[ $rem_bat -le $CRITICAL_PERCENT ]]; then SLEEP_TIME=1 pm-hibernate fi fi else SLEEP_TIME=10 fi sleep ${SLEEP_TIME}m done

Comment by ilpianista for

    #! /bin/bash

SLEEP_TIME=5   # Default time between checks.
SAFE_PERCENT=30  # Still safe at this level.
DANGER_PERCENT=15  # Warn when battery at this level.
CRITICAL_PERCENT=5  # Hibernate when battery at this level.

NAGBAR_PID=0
export DISPLAY=:0.0

function launchNagBar
{
    i3-nagbar -m 'Battery low!' -b 'Hibernate!' 'pm-hibernate' >/dev/null 2>&1 &
    NAGBAR_PID=$!
}

function killNagBar
{
    if [[ $NAGBAR_PID -ne 0 ]]; then
        ps -p $NAGBAR_PID | grep "i3-nagbar"
        if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]; then
            kill $NAGBAR_PID
        fi
        NAGBAR_PID=0
    fi
}


while [ true ]; do

    killNagBar

    if [[ -n $(acpi -b | grep -i discharging) ]]; then
        rem_bat=$(acpi -b | grep -Eo "[0-9]+%" | grep -Eo "[0-9]+")

        if [[ $rem_bat -gt $SAFE_PERCENT ]]; then
            SLEEP_TIME=10
        else
            SLEEP_TIME=5
            if [[ $rem_bat -le $DANGER_PERCENT ]]; then
                SLEEP_TIME=2
                launchNagBar
            fi
            if [[ $rem_bat -le $CRITICAL_PERCENT ]]; then
                SLEEP_TIME=1
                pm-hibernate
            fi
        fi
    else
        SLEEP_TIME=10
    fi

    sleep ${SLEEP_TIME}m

done

Sat, 31 Oct 2015 08:48:09 +0000

Here's my version using notify-send: https://gist.github.com/ilpianista/889312d44f5059ab4045

Comment by Michael for

    #! /bin/bash

SLEEP_TIME=5   # Default time between checks.
SAFE_PERCENT=30  # Still safe at this level.
DANGER_PERCENT=15  # Warn when battery at this level.
CRITICAL_PERCENT=5  # Hibernate when battery at this level.

NAGBAR_PID=0
export DISPLAY=:0.0

function launchNagBar
{
    i3-nagbar -m 'Battery low!' -b 'Hibernate!' 'pm-hibernate' >/dev/null 2>&1 &
    NAGBAR_PID=$!
}

function killNagBar
{
    if [[ $NAGBAR_PID -ne 0 ]]; then
        ps -p $NAGBAR_PID | grep "i3-nagbar"
        if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]; then
            kill $NAGBAR_PID
        fi
        NAGBAR_PID=0
    fi
}


while [ true ]; do

    killNagBar

    if [[ -n $(acpi -b | grep -i discharging) ]]; then
        rem_bat=$(acpi -b | grep -Eo "[0-9]+%" | grep -Eo "[0-9]+")

        if [[ $rem_bat -gt $SAFE_PERCENT ]]; then
            SLEEP_TIME=10
        else
            SLEEP_TIME=5
            if [[ $rem_bat -le $DANGER_PERCENT ]]; then
                SLEEP_TIME=2
                launchNagBar
            fi
            if [[ $rem_bat -le $CRITICAL_PERCENT ]]; then
                SLEEP_TIME=1
                pm-hibernate
            fi
        fi
    else
        SLEEP_TIME=10
    fi

    sleep ${SLEEP_TIME}m

done

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 12:34:55 +0000

Note that i3-nagbar _should not be used_ like this. Our expectation is that it’s only ever used by i3. It will never be extended to suit the needs of third-party use-cases like this. Please use something else.

Answer by vandannen for
So far so good with i3 :)

There is one thing though: When running on battery, while I have now the color of the battery text in the status bar changing to red when the battery reaches the threshold configured, it sometimes escapes my attention...

So I am thinking of having a popup or message appear when the battery reaches a certain threshold.

What would be a way to do that (without having to load any gnome stuff)? Other suggestions instead of popup also welcome.

Wed, 01 May 2013 12:11:04 +0000

If you have a notification daemon running, like notify-osd or dunst, you could popup a notification when the battery is running low. Sending an own notification message can be done with, e.g., notify-send (package libnotify-bin for debian) or dunstify (from dunst).

Answer by Julien Jehannet for
So far so good with i3 :)

There is one thing though: When running on battery, while I have now the color of the battery text in the status bar changing to red when the battery reaches the threshold configured, it sometimes escapes my attention...

So I am thinking of having a popup or message appear when the battery reaches a certain threshold.

What would be a way to do that (without having to load any gnome stuff)? Other suggestions instead of popup also welcome.

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 11:52:09 +0000

Since it was a long-standing issue for me as well, I post my solution here: 1. Use conky as system monitor. Minimal conky file is: out_to_x no own_window no out_to_console yes background no max_text_width 0 total_run_times 0 TEXT ${if_match ${laptop_mode}>=0} ${if_match ${battery_percent}<15} ${if_match ${battery_percent}<10} ${execi 20 xcalib -red 1.1 30.0 100.0 -alter} ${exec notify-send -u critical "$(acpi -b)"} ${else} ${execi 60 xcalib -red 1.1 20.0 100.0 -alter} ${execi 120 notify-send -u critical "$(acpi -b)" -t 5000} ${endif} ${endif} ${endif} 2. update your i3 bar (or create a new invisible one) with: # Inhibit SIGSTOP signal for conky status_command echo '{"version":1,"stop_signal":17}['; conky -c path/to/conkyrc Since i3bar sends the SIGSTOP signal to the statusline process to save battery power, you have to inhibit this behaviour. Be sure to use the right signal by invoking `kill -L` (I replaced SIGSTOP by SIGCHILD here) Apparently It's mandatory for invisible mode as well (not sure It's a feature or not).

Answer by chalist for
So far so good with i3 :)

There is one thing though: When running on battery, while I have now the color of the battery text in the status bar changing to red when the battery reaches the threshold configured, it sometimes escapes my attention...

So I am thinking of having a popup or message appear when the battery reaches a certain threshold.

What would be a way to do that (without having to load any gnome stuff)? Other suggestions instead of popup also welcome.

Wed, 02 Apr 2014 20:40:46 +0000

I found this in arch forum: I just use a cron job to do a check every five minutes and notify if there is less than 15 minutes of charge left #!/bin/bash BATTINFO=`acpi -b` if [[ `echo $BATTINFO | grep Discharging` && `echo $BATTINFO | cut -f 5 -d " "` < 00:15:00 ]] ; then DISPLAY=:0.0 /usr/bin/notify-send "low battery" "$BATTINFO" fi link: [https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=138755](https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=138755)