10 - Install and configure sketchybar macOS

Contents

• YouTube video
• If you like this, and want to support me
• Follow me on Twitter
• What is sketchybar
• Sketchybar demo
• Hide macos menubar
• Sketchybar installation
  • Install sketchybar
  • Install dependencies
• Install themes
  • Option 1: DOWNLOAD ‘sketchybar’ dir
    • Update .zshrc file
  • Option 2: CLONE dotfiles-latest repo
• Uninstall sketchybar

YouTube video

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• Here’s the link

What is sketchybar

• As the project owner FelixKratz states in the main repo page:
  • “This bar project aims to create a highly flexible, customizable, fast and powerful status bar replacement for people that like playing with shell scripts.”
• If you like this project, please star it in github, also in the same page you can sponsor the developer if you like all the hard work put into this
  • I don’t know the developer, nor we have exchanged messages

Sketchybar demo

• In the video, in this part I show what each part of the bar does when going over the sketchybarrc file
  • We will later see how to install the sketchybarrc file and other themes

Hide macos menubar

• To automatically hide the menu bar (bar on top)

• In macOS Sonoma you set the following to Always to hide the menu bar System Settings - Control Center - Automatically hide and show the menu bar

• You could instead use the following commands if needed

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set autohide menu bar of dock preferences to true'

• To disable this setting

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set autohide menu bar of dock preferences to false'

Sketchybar installation

• I’ll be following the installation instructions found in the main setup page
• We will need brew, if you don’t have brew installed, go and watch this video

Install sketchybar

brew tap FelixKratz/formulae
brew install sketchybar

• At the end of the sketchybar installation you will see the instructions to load the default configuration, so run these commands

mkdir -p ~/.config/sketchybar/plugins
cp /opt/homebrew/opt/sketchybar/share/sketchybar/examples/sketchybarrc ~/.config/sketchybar/sketchybarrc
cp -r /opt/homebrew/opt/sketchybar/share/sketchybar/examples/plugins/ ~/.config/sketchybar/plugins/
chmod +x ~/.config/sketchybar/plugins/*

# Restart sketchybar to apply the changes
brew services restart felixkratz/formulae/sketchybar

# Run sketchybar at startup
brew services start sketchybar

• Then reload sketchybar

sketchybar --reload

Install dependencies

• Install the default fonts and the fonts I personally use

brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts
brew install --cask font-hack-nerd-font

# Fonts that I personally use
brew install --cask font-meslo-lg-nerd-font

• I’m using a modified version of the plugin’s creator theme, so we need to install some additional dependencies that the plugin creator lists
• This information can be found in felixkratz dotfiles

# This shows the apple logo and rest of icons on the right
brew install --cask sf-symbols

# jq is used for parsing JSON data to extract specific pieces of information
# such as network status, media playback information, GitHub notifications, etc
brew install jq

# This installs the github cli tool
brew install gh

# This is used for switching audio sources and displaying microphone name
brew install switchaudio-osx

# This shows the icons for the apps
curl -L https://github.com/kvndrsslr/sketchybar-app-font/releases/download/v1.0.23/sketchybar-app-font.ttf -o $HOME/Library/Fonts/sketchybar-app-font.ttf

• To reload sketchybar after installing addons

sketchybar --reload

Install themes

• There are several themes created by community members that can be found in the setups discussion
• Go over the page, see which one you like, and hopefully the creator properly documented everything so you can replicate it
• In this guide I’ll install the theme that the plugin creator uses, also a modified version of that theme, which is what I use, and an additional theme
  • I haven’t fixed this last theme because I don’t use it, but feel free to do so by going over the ‘setups’ page I shared above

---

• In this guide you will have 2 options:
  • Only download the 'sketchybar' dir from my dotfiles
    • Preferred method if you already have your dotfiles and just want to grab the sketchybar part
    • This is also a good method if you don’t want to clone my repo and deal with git commands
  • Clone my entire dotfiles-latest repo
    • Follow this method if you’re following my playlist: 2024 macOS workflow
    • For more information on what dotfiles are watch this video

---

• When working with themes, make sure that all of the .sh files inside each theme’s directory have executable permissions, otherwise the scripts won’t work properly

Option 1: DOWNLOAD ‘sketchybar’ dir

• You only have to follow 1 of the 2 install theme methods
• Remember:
  • This is the preferred method if you already have your dotfiles and just want to grab my sketchybar part
  • This is also a good method if you don’t want to clone my repo and deal with git commands
• First I’ll create the github directory where I’ll download the themes
  • If you already have your own dotfiles dir, you don’t need to create the dir below, you can use your own dir instead

mkdir -p ~/github
cd ~/github/

• Do the following in Google Chrome, I tried safari and the download does not work
• You will need a github account for this, if you don’t have one, set it up
• Go to my dotfiles-latest repo
• Once there, press . (dot)
  • Or instead you can switch the github.com to github.dev on the top to go to the
• Right click on the sketchybar directory and download it to the github directory we created above
  • If you already have your own dotfiles dir, download it there
• Since we didn’t clone the entire repo, there will not be a git configuration, so file permissions will not be preserved, and .sh files may not be executable, we con confirm this with the following command
  • We will not see an x permission on the file, but instead rw-------
  • I’m also looking for a file called helper which is the one that graphs the CPU utilization, so need to make that exec as well
  • -type f shows only files, excluding directories

cd ~/github/sketchybar
find . -name "*.sh" -type f -exec ls -l {} +
find . -name "helper" -type f -exec ls -l {} +

• So we will make the files executable
  • The cd is not needed here, but adding it as a precaution, nothing happens if you’re already in that dir
  • All files will be listed and you will see now they have rwx--x--x

cd ~/github/sketchybar
find . -name "*.sh" -type f -exec chmod +x {} +
find . -name "helper" -type f -exec chmod +x {} +
find . -name "*.sh" -type f -exec ls -l {} +
find . -name "helper" -type f -exec ls -l {} +

---

• Now to apply the themes we just downloaded
• The first one is my modified version of the owners theme
  • I use yabai in stack mode so I disabled the spaces, as I keep all my apps in a single macOS desktop/workspace
  • If you want to learn more about my yabai config, watch this video
  • I also switch between apps using karabiner-elements mappings, for that you can check this video

ln -snf ~/github/sketchybar/felixkratz-linkarzu ~/.config/sketchybar
brew services restart felixkratz/formulae/sketchybar
sketchybar --reload

• Owners theme as of March 7th 2024
  • If you’re not using yabai or not using it in stack mode and using multiple macOS desktops/workspaces, this is probably a better choice, as you will be able to see your desktops and apps on each one. Also switch between spaces

ln -snf ~/github/sketchybar/felixkratz ~/.config/sketchybar
brew services restart felixkratz/formulae/sketchybar
sketchybar --reload

• Default, out of the box, config

ln -snf ~/github/sketchybar/default ~/.config/sketchybar
brew services restart felixkratz/formulae/sketchybar
sketchybar --reload

• This below is a community theme, I haven’t configured it properly, because I don’t use it but you can figure it out by following the following thread in setups discussion

ln -snf ~/github/sketchybar/neutonfoo ~/.config/sketchybar
brew services restart felixkratz/formulae/sketchybar
sketchybar --reload

Update .zshrc file

• If you downloaded the sketchybar dir, make sure you add the code below to your zshrc file for the brew item to auto update when you run brew commands
• The code that you need to add to your ~/.zshrc file is shown here

# I'm using vim to edit the file here, but use whichever text editor you want
# If the file already exists, its timestamp will be updated, but the existing
# content won't be affected by the 'touch' command below
touch ~/.zshrc
vim ~/.zshrc

Option 2: CLONE dotfiles-latest repo

• You only have to follow 1 of the 2 install theme methods
• Follow this method if you’re following my playlist: 2024 macOS workflow
• We’ll be switching to a new repo, which has the same contents I had in the repo we have been using, but it has more updates and is the repo that I’ll keep maintaining from now on
• If you want to fork the repo to have your own copy and make changes to re upload to your own github account, see my following video 04 - What are dotfiles and how to clone them
• The commands below apply to both if you’re new and want to clone my entire repo, or if you’re switching from my old repo

# If the github dir already exists, no issues, you can still run the command
mkdir -p ~/github
cd ~/github/
git clone https://github.com/linkarzu/dotfiles-latest.git

• We’ll checkout to the specific commit shown in the video so that the files look the same as in the video and you don’t

cd dotfiles-latest
git checkout adf127a73b6c57383b6ae17211ceeaf978f70b4a

# Create a backup of the existing ~/.zshrc file
# If the original ~/.zshrc file does not exist, nothing will happen
cp ~/.zshrc ~/.zshrc_backup_$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S) >/dev/null 2>&1

# Create the symlink to point .zshrc to the file in my dotfiles-latest repo
ln -snf ~/github/dotfiles-latest/zshrc/zshrc-file.sh ~/.zshrc

source ~/.zshrc

---

• Then you need to switch the theme by editing the following file ~/github/dotfiles-latest/zshrc/zshrc-file.sh
• After editing the file as I show in the video source it, that will also reload sketchybar

source ~/.zshrc

Uninstall sketchybar

brew uninstall sketchybar
brew untap FelixKratz/formulae

pkill "sketchybar"

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set autohide menu bar of dock preferences to false'

• If you’re using my .zshrc config, also make sure to comment the create_symlink line related to sketchybar

---

• You could also delete the rest of the dependencies that were installed (jq, fonts, switchaudio-osx, gh), but I like keeping them, as all of them are dependencies that I use, the rest are just fonts, it doesn’t hurt me to keep them.
  • If you want to uninstall them just run a brew uninstall command instead of brew install