What is the best alternative to Polybar?

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score 40 · Answer 1

tint2

Top Pro

Easy to theme and customize

You can easily tweak the panel and make it very good looking by using tint2-settings. See More

Top Con

No intelligent hide option

Tint2 provides autohide option but there's no way to autohide it when windows are maximized or overlap the panel. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

Very lightweight with minimal resource use. Often used with lightweight window managers. See More

Top Pro

Feature rich

Despite being lightweight, tint2 provides most options available for system panels including launchers, taskbar, system tray, clock. See More

Top Pro

Panel as well as dock

Depending on configuration, tint2 can be a panel with taskbar, systemtry, menu, battery etc or as a standalone dock for launchers. See More

Top Pro

Multi-instant support

Many instances of tint2 can be opened concurrently using different config files. See More

Top Pro

Works as a simple dock for i3wm

Tiling WMs are great but sometimes the mouse is your friend too! Tint2 can easily be configured as a little dock for i3wm. See More

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40 1

score 30 · Answer 2

DockbarX

Top Pro

Easily customized

DockbarX has inbuilt settings that allow the user to easily customize the look of the dock, from changing the text color to the background color. See More

Top Con

Not actively updated

Less than a dozen updates since 2014: https://github.com/M7S/dockbarx/commits/master See More

Top Pro

Great plugin to help blend in to XFCE4 panel

DockbarX has an available plugin called "DockBarX Xfce4 Panel plugin" that allows DockbarX to blend in seamlessly with the XFCE4 panel, which is great for XFCE users due to the limited options of the default panel. See More

Top Pro

Easily the best Win 7 taskbar functionality

If you want a combined launcher/manager, a la Win 7, this is it. See More

30 1

score 48 · Answer 3

Latte Dock

Top Pro

Highly customizable

Easy to use. See More

Top Con

No longer supported by devs

And thus buggy. See More

Top Pro

Looks good

Top Con

Does not yet work on Wayland

Crashes. See More

48 3

score 274 · Answer 4

Plank

Top Pro

Simple and minimal

Plank is a good choice for those looking for something simple that just does its job well. There is no UI for options built in to the dock as to change anything those options will have to be accessed through a text file. See More

Top Con

No right click menu for some apps outside of elementary OS

Other file explorers and terminals (those not found in the default elementary OS) do not have any right click menus for the dock meaning it is impossible to launch multiple windows for certain file explorers or terminals. See More

Top Pro

Solid and lightweight

Top Con

Poor workplace awareness (cycling windows)

When configured to only show apps on current workspace, cycling an app open on multiple workspaces will switch workspace focus, update the dock and often leave you to cycle another app. See More

Top Pro

Third party themer available

An additional third party app has been developed that allows theming the dock without the use of any extra resources. This is great for those that are not using elementary OS and the elementary tweaks extra. See More

274 13

score 123 · Answer 5

Docky

Top Pro

Panel mode

For those that do not like the OSX dock look there is also a panel mode included that pushed the apps to the left side of the panel and elongates the dock to fill the entire bottom of the screen, just as a regular OS panel would. See More

Top Con

Removing Docky icon is not as easy as it should be

gconf editor is required in order to remove the Docky icon from the dock, which seems unnecessary as the setting exists, it should be in the app settings instead of hidden away in gconf. See More

Top Pro

Drag and drop apps to the dock

Users can easily drag and drop apps to the dock for easy launching. Any app that is added will stay on the dock until removed manually. This makes for a great way to have all of ones most used apps in one place. See More

Top Pro

Many themes

There are several themes installed with the dock by default that aare easily switched in the settings. What is even better is that there are many themes available online for download as well. With the best part being thatt he themes are simple .svg files that are easily editable in Inkscape to customize to how one wants. See More

Top Pro

Highly Customisable.

Top Pro

Plugin Docklets

Docky provides simple applications that run inside of the dock such as a clock, weather forecaster and CPU monitor. These provide an easy way to see information without having to open up separate apps. See More

123 19

score 61 · Answer 6

Cairo-Dock

Top Con

No updates since 2016

Certainly no PPAs for modern releases of Ubuntu. See More

Top Pro

Easy to tweak and make your own themes

Drag and drop, change icons, use effects, etc. It's fun to play with. It's not a basic dock program and the GUI is good. See More

Top Con

Poor/No system theme or icon integration

Docks use their own theme, own theme colors, icons, layout's and theme engines. See More

Top Pro

Cairo-Dock session

Users can choose to launch a stand alone Cairo-Dock session where the dock also serves as a taskbar where all apps are launchable such as in any other DE session. There is a composited version and one without. See More

Top Con

Hard/Underwhelming to configure

Cairo dock proposes a feature rich tool, tweakable to any degree. The configuration menus are at times inappropriate, shallow and uninteresting, complex to navigate, and prefab-centric. Rarely offering a satisfying preset, and always unsatisfying to tweak. See More

Top Pro

Popular and usually found and installed from a distros repo

Due to the popularity and how long Cairo-Dock has been around it is more often than not found in a distros repos, which is very convenient to get the app installed. See More

Top Con

Can be heavy on resources for weaker systems

Cairo-Dock is more on the heavy side when compared to other docks, which is something to keep in mind for those that are on low resource systems. See More

Top Pro

Easily themed

Cairo-Dock has built in settings to install and use themes for the dock and icons. Definitely more robust in this are than most other docks available for Linux. See More

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