Installation

Conky can be installed with this command:

sudo pacman -S conky

.conkyrc file

The entire conky is created from one file. by default, it is called .conkyrc file and the path is:

~/.conkyrc

or a longer file path:

/home/<username>/.conkyrc

Replace <username> with your user/account name.

All files with names starting with a dot . are hidden files. If you want to see hidden files in your file manager, you need to make them visible.

Code

The .conkyrc file can be edited with every text editor. It's code is split into two parts:

The first part contains all the configuration settings for the entire conky. Things like the position of the conky on your screen, transparency settings, border settings, the default font and it's size, and how often your conky gets updated. A great documentation of all possible configuration settings is available. This part ends with a code line containing only one word: TEXT
The second part contains the displayed conky code. Every code line after the TEXT separator corresponds to one displayed conky line on your desktop. There are a lot of variables available for displaying all kind of information.

Running conky

If you want to display a conky on your desktop a .conkyrc file with code in it is required. Next, open a terminal and run conky:

conky

or

conky -d

if you want to run conky as a background daemon.

If you want to run conky automatically after each boot of your computer, you need to find out how to autostart a program. This depends on the Desktop Manager you are using. After that running one of the following commands should work:

conky

conky -d

sh -c "sleep 10 && conky"

sleep 10 && conky

Troubleshooting

Missing rings

If (often colored) rings are missing in your conky, please install the following package:

yaourt -S conky-lua

Here is help for installing packages from the Arch User Repository.

Missing network information

If network information is missing like download speed or network name (SSID), you need to replace the network card name in network variables in the .conkyrc file with your network card name.

Open a terminal an enter

ip a

in order to see all available network cards in your computer. A sample output looks like this:

$ ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> ....
2: enp9s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> .....
3: wlp2s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> .....

In this case, enp9s0 is the name of your ethernet card and wlp2s0 is the name of your wireless network card. Replace all network card names (e.g. wlan0, eth0) in network variables in your .conkyrc file with your preferred network card name.

FAQ

A detailed FAQ is available here

More

The homepage of the conky project can be interesting, especially the documentation.

Furthermore, a dedicated conky thread with a lot of .conkyrc files and screenshots is available here. Searching on the Internet for .conkyrc can yield a lot of great .conkyrc files, too.

A forum thread is available here

Basic Tips for conky

Contents