Battray is a simple tray icon to show your laptop’s battery status. It's simple, easy, fairly environment-independent, and ‘just works’ without tons of {Gnome,KDE,..} dependencies.

You can also configure it to play annoying sounds if your battery is getting low, dim the screen when you switch from AC to battery, etc.

Installation

The quickest is to install it with pip:

pip install battray

Manual instructions

Battray requires Python 3.2+ with GTK (through PyGObject). It runs on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux.

OpenBSD:

doas pkg_add py-gobject3

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install python3-gi

After that run ./battray.py with Python 3. You can run ./setup.py install if you like it.

Configuration

The default settings should be good for most people, but Battray is pretty flexible and you can set it up as you like. The default configuration is at /usr/share/battray/battrayrc.py or /usr/local/share/battray/battrayrc.py, copy it to ~/.config/battray/battrayrc.py and edit it, there are a few comments to get you started.

The configuration file is run with exec(), so any Python code goes.

Available functions

• source_default()
  Source the default configuration file; this way you can append the default configuration file with your own commands, rather than completely overwrite it.

• run(cmd)
  Run cmd (string) in shell. Note: no escaping will be done on the command.

• play(sound)
  Play a .wav file. If you're on Linux, you'll need the pyalsaaudio for this to work.

• play_once(sound, id)
  Play a .wav file once, until reset_playonce() is called for this id; id can be anything.

• reset_play_once(id)
  Reset the playonce flag for the sound id, so it will be played again when play_once() is called for this id.

• set_icon(file)
  Set icon to this file.

• set_color('red|yellow|green')
  Fill battery icon with this color; it can either be the colour name green, yellow, or red, or a color code as int in RGBA: 0xff0000ff (the last byte is the alpha channel).

• notify(msg, level)
  Send a desktop notification; you need a notification daemon (such as dunst) running to see this.

• notify_once(msg, level, id)
  Send a desktop notification once; like play_once() (but the ids are not shared!).

• reset_notify_once(id)
  Reset notift_once(), like reset_play_once().

• wall(msg)
  Write msg to all ttys; uses wall(1).

Available variables

• charging
True if notebook is charging the battery, False if not, None if unknown.

• ac
True if notebook is connected to AC power, False if not, None if unknown.

• percent
  Percentage of battery time remaining; -1 if unknown.

• lifetime
  Remaining battery time in minutes; -1 if unknown.

• switched_to Set to 'battery' if we switched to battery since last poll, or 'ac' if we plugged the power in since the last poll. Otherwise set to None.

ChangeLog

Version 2.3, 2017-11-07

• FreeBSD: Fix for Python 3.
• Linux: Remove support for /sys for now as it seems that this changed on newer systems; UPower is required.

Version 2.2, 2016-04-24

• Better handle systems without any battery by showing a message in the tooltip rather than in the console or showing "unknown" (OpenBSD & Linux only, I don't have a FreeBSD system to test this).
• Fix some Gtk/Gobject deprecation warnings.

Version 2.1, 2015-11-09

• Fix for some versions of Ubuntu
• Move some stuff around so we can show a clear message that only Python 3 is supported.

Version 2.0, 2015-09-18

• Configuration files from previous versions are not compatible.
• Use PyGobject instead of PyGTK.
• Better support for Linux.
• Only support Python 3 for now.
• Many changes.

Version 1.5, 2012-07-11

• Bugfix: Fix FreeBSD CURRENT/10.
• Bugfix: Don't panic if there's no battery present (FreeBSD).
• Bugfix: Properly deal with unknown percentage/lifetime values.
• Feature: Add playonce() and reset_playonce() functions.
• Update default config.
• Update docs.

Version 1.4, 2011-09-26

• Play sounds in a better way (Separate thread, not separate process).
• Update a few docs.

Version 1.3, 2011-07-24

• Configuration files from previous versions are not compatible.
• Add Linux support (Submitted by Andy Mikhaylenko).
• Better configuration file/platform file importing.
• We now play a wav file with OSS instead of (trying to) use the PC speaker. Most laptops emulate a PC speaker, but the exact implementation varies from vendor to vendor and is the usual mess we've come to expect of these simple things :-(
• Add installer.
• Fix FreeBSD/amd64.

Version 1.2, 2009-10-22

• New configuration file syntax, which is much more flexible.
• Add simple Makefile for easier installation & deinstallation.
• Add manpage.
• Various minor improvements.

Version 1.1, 2009-09-06

• Battery icon is now green/yellow/red depending on battery life remaining.
• Battray will now warn you if battery level is below a certain percentage (See warn and warnMethod options in config.py).
• Reload configuration on SIGHUP.
• Added instructions on how to add platform.
• Add new icon to indicate error (Instead of no icon loaded at all).
• Fix FreeBSD platform, thanks to Eponasoft @ FreeBSD forums for reporting & testing.
• Some improvements on the OpenBSD platform.

Version 1.0, 2009-08-16

• Initial release.

Authors and license

Battray was written by Martin Tournoij [email protected] and released under the terms of the MIT license:

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright © 2008-2017 Martin Tournoij

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

The software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the software.

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The notification sound is by Keith W. Blackwell and released under the terms of the CC BY license.