i3 Dotfiles

showcase.mp4

A polished Arch Linux i3/X11 desktop built around synchronized themes, switchable Polybar layouts, and Rofi-powered utilities.

The Wayland and Hyprland files in this repository are kept only as personal backups. This README and showcase focus entirely on the active i3 setup.

Themes

One Rofi menu switches the wallpaper and colours across i3, Polybar, Rofi, Kitty, rmpc, Cava, Dunst, and GTK.

Monochrome	Everforest	Gruvbox

Catppuccin Mocha	Lavender Light

Theme switching includes

• i3 borders and focused-window colours
• Polybar colours
• Rofi colours
• Kitty colours
• rmpc and Cava colours
• Dunst notification colours
• GTK theme and icon theme
• Desktop wallpaper
• Betterlockscreen wallpaper cache

Polybar layouts

Three layouts can be switched instantly through Rofi.

Default	Floating Islands	Minimal

• Default — the full setup with system information, tray, media, notifications, notes, and hardware controls.
• Floating Islands — rounded modules floating on a transparent bar canvas.
• Minimal — a compact everyday layout with only the essentials.

Desktop stack

Role	Program
Window manager	i3
Status bar	Polybar
Launcher and menus	Rofi
Terminal	Kitty
Shell	Zsh + Starship
Compositor	Picom
Notifications	Dunst
File manager	Nemo
Lock screen	Betterlockscreen
Music	MPD + rmpc
Video	MPV + ModernZ
Terminal editor	Ox
System information	Fastfetch

Features

Rofi desktop toolkit

Custom Rofi menus provide:

• Application launching
• Theme switching
• Polybar layout switching
• Wallpaper browsing
• Power and game-mode controls
• Bluetooth management
• Screen recording
• Scratchpad notes
• Config-file editing in Ox
• Calculator
• Web search

Wallpaper picker

The wallpaper picker includes:

• Theme-based categories
• Thumbnail previews
• Favourites
• Random selection
• Current-wallpaper tracking
• Thumbnail cache rebuilding
• Betterlockscreen cache updates
• Theme-matched menu colours

Config menu

The config menu groups important files into clean sections:

• i3
• Polybar
• Rofi
• rmpc
• Colourschemes
• Kitty

Files and folders open in Ox inside Kitty.

Scratchpad notes

The Rofi scratchpad can:

• Capture quick notes
• Sort entries into todos, ideas, brain dumps, and general notes
• Search previous entries
• Copy entries
• Delete individual entries
• Clear a whole category
• Show note counts in Polybar

Screen recorder

The recorder supports:

• Fullscreen recording
• Region recording
• No audio
• Microphone audio
• Desktop audio
• Mixed microphone and desktop audio
• Toggle-to-stop behaviour

Polybar modules

Depending on the selected layout, Polybar can show:

• i3 workspaces
• Weather
• Date and time
• System tray
• MPRIS media information and controls
• Audio output and microphone state
• CPU, memory, temperature, and battery
• Bluetooth state
• Dunst notification state
• Scratchpad note counts
• Night-light controls
• Power menu
• Optional PlayStation friend presence

The PlayStation module can display an online-friend count and open Rofi lists for online or all friends.

i3 workflow

• Five workspaces
• Gaps and themed borders
• Autotiling
• Fullscreen and floating controls
• Native i3 scratchpad support
• Media-key controls
• External-monitor brightness controls with Dunst OSD
• Floating rules for selected utilities
• Modular keybind and startup files

Terminal and shell

Kitty includes:

• Nerd Font support
• Background transparency
• Minimal decorations
• Theme includes
• Familiar clipboard paste binding

Zsh includes:

• Shared and deduplicated history
• Case-insensitive completion
• fzf-tab
• Autosuggestions
• Syntax highlighting
• Starship prompt
• Zoxide

Music and video

• MPD music daemon
• rmpc with mouse support, album art, lyrics, playlists, search, and queue views
• MPV with the ModernZ interface
• Polybar MPRIS playback controls

Useful shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Super + Space	Application launcher
Super + T	Theme and Polybar-layout switcher
Super + W	Wallpaper picker
Super + P	Power and game-mode menu
Super + B	Bluetooth menu
Super + N	Scratchpad notes
Super + Shift + P	Screen recorder
Super + Shift + C	Config menu
Super + X	Calculator
Super + S	Region screenshot
Super + Q	Kitty
Super + E	Nemo
Super + L	Lock screen
Super + C	Close focused window
Super + F	Fullscreen
Super + Shift + F	Toggle floating
Super + 1–5	Change workspace
Super + Shift + 1–5	Move window to workspace
Super + Shift + R	Reload i3 and restart Polybar

Repository structure

dotfiles/
├── i3/                 # i3 config, keybinds, startup, and scripts
├── polybar/            # Shared modules, layouts, and helper scripts
├── rofi/               # Launcher themes and custom desktop menus
├── colorschemes/       # Synchronized colour profiles
├── Walls/              # Wallpapers grouped by theme
├── kitty/              # Terminal configuration
├── dunst/              # Notification styling
├── picom/              # Blur, transparency, and rounded corners
├── rmpc/               # MPD client configuration
├── mpd/                # MPD configuration
├── mpv/                # MPV and ModernZ configuration
├── ox/                 # Ox plugins
├── .oxrc               # Ox editor configuration
├── fastfetch/          # System-information layout
├── assets/             # README screenshots
├── .zshrc              # Shell configuration
└── starship.toml       # Prompt configuration

Other window-manager and Wayland folders may remain in the repository as personal backups, but they are not part of the documented i3 setup.

Notes

This is a personal configuration rather than a universal installer. Monitor names, resolution, weather location, preferred applications, and personal paths may need to be changed before reuse.