Using the Popup Toolkit

This guide explains how to create popups that can be used to add functionality to widgets or create standalone launchers.

What’s in the toolkit?

The Toolkit has two types of object, a layout and a control. The layout is the container that helps organise the presentation of the popup. The controls are the objects that display the content.

A simple comparison would be to think of the Bar as the layout and widgets as the controls. However, a key difference of this toolkit is that the controls can be placed anywhere in a 2D space whereas widgets can only be ordered in one dimension.

Layouts

The toolkit provides three layouts: PopupGridLayout, PopupRelativeLayout and PopupAbsoluteLayout.

Descriptions and configuration options of these layouts can be found on the reference page.

Controls

Currently, the following controls are provided:

• PopupText: a simple text display object

• PopupImage: a control to display an image

• PopupSlider: a control to draw a line which marks a particular value (e.g. volume level)

• PopupWidget: a control to display a Qtile widget in the popup

Configuration options for these controls can be found on the reference page.

Callbacks

To add functionality to your popup, you need to bind callbacks to the individual controls. This is achieved in the same way as widgets i.e. a dictionary of mouse_callbacks is passed as a configuration option for the control. The control accepts any callable function but also accepts lazy objects like those used for key bindings.

Building a popup menu

Below is an example of creating a power menu in your config.py.

from qtile_extras.popup.toolkit import (
    PopupRelativeLayout,
    PopupImage,
    PopupText
)

def show_power_menu(qtile):

    controls = [
        PopupImage(
            filename="~/Pictures/icons/lock.svg",
            pos_x=0.15,
            pos_y=0.1,
            width=0.1,
            height=0.5,
            mouse_callbacks={
                "Button1": lazy.spawn("/path/to/lock_cmd")
            }
        ),
        PopupImage(
            filename="~/Pictures/icons/sleep.svg",
            pos_x=0.45,
            pos_y=0.1,
            width=0.1,
            height=0.5,
            mouse_callbacks={
                "Button1": lazy.spawn("/path/to/sleep_cmd")
            }
        ),
        PopupImage(
            filename="~/Pictures/icons/shutdown.svg",
            pos_x=0.75,
            pos_y=0.1,
            width=0.1,
            height=0.5,
            highlight="A00000",
            mouse_callbacks={
                "Button1": lazy.shutdown()
            }
        ),
        PopupText(
            text="Lock",
            pos_x=0.1,
            pos_y=0.7,
            width=0.2,
            height=0.2,
            h_align="center"
        ),
        PopupText(
            text="Sleep",
            pos_x=0.4,
            pos_y=0.7,
            width=0.2,
            height=0.2,
            h_align="center"
        ),
        PopupText(
            text="Shutdown",
            pos_x=0.7,
            pos_y=0.7,
            width=0.2,
            height=0.2,
            h_align="center"
        ),
    ]

    layout = PopupRelativeLayout(
        qtile,
        width=1000,
        height=200,
        controls=controls,
        background="00000060",
        initial_focus=None,
    )

    layout.show(centered=True)

keys = [
    ...
    Key([mod, "shift"], "q", lazy.function(show_power_menu))
    ...
]

Now, when you press Mod+shift+q you should see a menu looking like this:

Using widgets in a popup

It is possible to display widgets in a popup window and not just in the bar. This is possible by using the PopupWidget control.

Below is a quick example for displaying a number of graph widgets in a popup:

from libqtile import widget
from qtile_extras.popup.toolkit import (
    PopupRelativeLayout,
    PopupWidget
)

def show_graphs(qtile)
    controls = [
        PopupWidget(
            widget=widget.CPUGraph(),
            width=0.45,
            height=0.45,
            pos_x=0.05,
            pos_y=0.05
        ),
        tk.PopupWidget(
            widget=widget.NetGraph(),
            width=0.45,
            height=0.45,
            pos_x=0.5,
            pos_y=0.05
        ),
        tk.PopupWidget(
            widget=widget.MemoryGraph(),
            width=0.9,
            height=0.45,
            pos_x=0.05,
            pos_y=0.5
        )
    ]

    layout = tk.PopupRelativeLayout(
        qtile,
        width=1000,
        height=200,
        controls=controls,
        background="00000060",
        initial_focus=None,
        close_on_click=False
    )
    layout.show(centered=True)

keys = [
    ...
    Key([mod, "shift"], "g", lazy.function(show_graphs))
    ...
]

Pressing Mod+shift+g will present a popup window looking like this:

Extending widgets

[To be drafted]