From QuickShell to Waybar: Simplifying My Sway Desktop
Not long after publishing my previous article on migrating from Xfce4 to Sway and QuickShell, I noticed a creeping problem. While QuickShell gave me total freedom to build a custom top panel, I was spending far too much time maintaining bespoke QML widgets and background polling scripts just to keep basic desktop status indicators running. I had traded Xfce's brittle XML files for my own mini widget framework—so I began looking for a simpler way. That search led me straight to Waybar . Because Sway and Wayland were already doing the heavy lifting for window management, replacing QuickShell with Waybar allowed me to retire nearly all of my custom panel code in favour of a native, configuration-driven status bar. Here is a quick look at what was required for the conversion and how the desktop feels on the other side. Why Move On from QuickShell? QuickShell is a clever toolkit, and it handled rich popups and custom hover cards beautifully. However, building every panel widget f...