Macchina

Fast, minimal and customizable system information frontend. Linux • macOS • Windows • NetBSD • FreeBSD • OpenWrt • Android

Table of Contents

• About
• What's new in v3.0
• Performance
• Features
• Configuration
• Runtime dependencies
• Installation
• Contributors

About

macchina lets you view system information, like your kernel version, uptime, memory usage, processor load and much more.

If you're interested in the library macchina uses to fetch system information, have a look at libmacchina; fetching-related issues should be filed on that repository.

What's new in v3.0

LocalIP Readout

You are now required to specify your network interface for the local IP readout to work properly.

• In your macchina.toml, add the following:

```toml

The interface name might differ on your machine, please check in with your network utility e.g. ip address

interface = "wlan0" ```

Why the sudden change?

• We changed IP crates. The previous crate would ping Google DNS servers in order to fetch your local IP. And nobody wants that.

• We understand that a lot of you are developers and/or power users, and need your fetcher to be quick, powerful and extensible. If it's a docker container whose local IP you wanna grab, a virtual machine or anything that relies on a network interface to communicate with the outside world, we've got you covered.

Kernel Readout

You can now shorten the output of the kernel readout through the new --long-kernel flag or by adding the following to your macchina.toml:

```toml

When set to false, only the version of your

operating system's kernel will be displayed.

long_kernel = false ```

Themes

You can now customize the text of every readout's key — Whaaaat!

Jump in your theme file and add the following:

json "keys": { "host": "HOST", "kernel": "KERN", "battery": "BAT", "os": "OS", "de": "DE", "wm": "WM", "distro": "DIST", "terminal": "TERM", "shell": "SHELL", "packages": "PKGS", "uptime": "UP", "memory": "MEM", "machine": "MACH", "local_ip": "IP", "backlight": "BRI", "resolution": "RES", "cpu_load": "CPU LOAD", "cpu": "CPU" },

Performance

macchina is lightning fast, see for yourself:

• Execution time is measured using hyperfine

🐧 Linux

This benchmark was performed using an Intel® Core™ i5-3350P CPU @ 3.10GHz

| Command | Mean [ms] | Min [ms] | Max [ms] | | :--------- | --------: | -------: | -------: | | macchina | 4.8 ± 0.4 | 4.5 | 8.1 |

🍏 macOS

| Command | Mean [ms] | Min [ms] | Max [ms] | | :--------- | --------: | -------: | -------: | | macchina | 5.0 ± 0.2 | 4.7 | 5.9 |

🚩 NetBSD

This benchmark was performed inside a virtual machine using an Intel® Core™ i5-8265U CPU @ 1.60GHz

| Command | Mean [ms] | Min [ms] | Max [ms] | | :--------- | ---------: | -------: | -------: | | macchina | 17.7 ± 1.6 | 16.8 | 27.2 |

💻 Windows

| Command | Mean [ms] | Min [ms] | Max [ms] | | :--------- | --------: | -------: | -------: | | macchina | 9.0 ± 0.4 | 8.2 | 11.7 |

Features

Themes

macchina comes equipped with built-in themes that style their readouts, bars and separators differently. You can see the list with the --list-themes flag and use the one you like with --theme <name>, you can also make your own.

Bars

Bars provide a way to visualize data, through symbols rather than numbers, and they can be enabled using the --bar flag.

Doctor

libmacchina can sometimes fail to fetch certain readouts, and macchina has a feature in place that allows you to see why they failed, this is done through the --doctor flag.

Configuration

See macchina.toml for an example configuration file.

• In order for macchina to be able to read the configuration file, you need to place macchina.toml in:
  • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/macchina on Linux and the BSDs.
  • $HOME/Library/Application Support/macchina on macOS.
  • {FOLDERID_RoamingAppData}/macchina on Windows.

You can also create custom themes in JSON format. Themes allow for more customization and are separate from the main configuration file. See Carbon.json for an example theme.

• In order for macchina to be able to read your custom themes, you need to place them in:
  • $XDG_DATA_HOME/macchina/themes on Linux and the BSDs.
  • $HOME/Library/Application/macchina/themes on macOS.
  • {FOLDERID_RoamingAppData}/macchina/themes on Windows.

You can have as many as you want, just avoid using the names of built-in themes.

To start using your theme:

1. Run macchina --list-themes to verify that macchina has listed your theme.
2. Inside macchina.toml, add theme = <name_of_theme_without_json_extension>.
3. You're good to go! macchina will start using your theme.

Runtime dependencies

These dependencies are not required, but they extend what macchina can show.

Linux:

• wmctrl
• Gentoo: portage-utils

NetBSD:

• wmctrl

Installation

Cargo

cargo install macchina

Pkgsrc

pkgin install macchina

Homebrew

brew install macchina

Termux

pkg install macchina

Windows

scoop install macchina

Arch Linux

• Use the AUR package that pulls and installs the latest release:

bash git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/macchina.git cd macchina makepkg -si

• Or use the AUR package that pulls and builds from upstream:

bash git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/macchina-git.git cd macchina makepkg -si

Nix

• Where <channel> is nixpkgs or nixos:

bash nix-env -iA <channel>.macchina

The installation wiki page lists some other ways you can install the program or the steps to compile from source.

You might prefer running the prebuilt binary that corresponds with your operating system.

Contributors

macchina, like many other open-source projects, would not be where it is right now without the help of its contributors, thank you all so much!

• Support for NetBSD would not have been possible without the help and testing of NetBSD/pkgsrc package maintainer pin
• Support for macOS and Windows would not have been possible without the help, testing and major contributions of 123marvin123
• Support for OpenWrt and Android was made possible through the many contributions of uttarayan21