wmbattery (1x)

wmbattery [options]

wmbattery is a battery monitor. It is used to visually display the system's battery status.

wmbattery can get battery information using upower, HAL, APM, ACPI, or the SPIC controller in some Sony laptops. wmbattery is dockable using WindowMaker and AfterStep window managers; under other window managers wmbattery appears as a nicely-sized 64x64 application.

wmbattery displays the status of your laptop's battery in a small icon. This includes if it is plugged in, if the battery is charging, how many minutes of battery life remain, battery life remaining (with both a percentage and a graph), and battery status (high - green, low - yellow, or critical - red).

The wmbattery display consists of these elements:

dial

The large dial at the top of the display shows battery life remaining.

time display

The time display, right under and in the middle of the dial, shows how many hours and minutes of battery life is estimated to remain at the current rate of use.

If ACPI is used and battery is charging, the time display will instead show a countdown (starting with a minus sign) of how many hours and minutes it is estimated to take until the battery is fully charged.

power cord

The small icon of a power cord plug, in the bottom left, tells if the laptop is plugged into wall power. If so, it will be lit.

charging indicator

The lightning bolt icon, to the right of the plug, tells if the battery is being charged. If so it will be lit and will connect the plug to the battery.

battery icon

The battery icon, to the right of the lighting bolt, shows the percentage of battery time. If the battery is removed the icon will be dimmed. If the computer is low on power the battery will turn yellow; if the computer is critically low on power and about to die because of it, it will turn red.

-h

Display list of command-line options.

-w secs

Pause this many seconds between updates.

-d display

Use the designated X display.

-g +x+y

Specify geometry. This specifies position, not size.

-b battnum

Display the given battery. Only of use with the HAL or ACPI interfaces on systems with more than one battery. The default is to display the first battery found.

-l percent

Set the percentage at which the battery is considered to be running low. By default, this percentage is determined automaticall, and you shouldn't need to set it. If you set this, you should probably also set the -c switch.

-c percent

Set the percentage at which the battery is considered to be critically low. By default, this percentage is determined automatically, and you shouldn't need to set it. If you set this, you should probably also set the -l switch.

-e

wmbattery contains code for estimating the time remaining before discharge, and until full charge, and this code is used if no other source of this informaton is available. This switch makes wmbattery use its time estimation code even if some other estimate is available.

-s granularity

Ignore fluctuations less than the specified granularity percent when estimating time. (Implies -e)

-a file.au

Play the specified au file (by sending it to /dev/audio) when the battery is low.

-x command

Execute the specified command when the battery is below critical. The strings %percent%, %minutes% and %seconds% will be translated into the appropriate values.

-i

Display as icon.

Start at 10% battery to execute 'echo' including status information:

wmbattery -c 10 -x "echo Status: %percent%% - %minutes% minutes, %seconds% seconds left"

Joey Hess <[email protected]>