Table of Contents

• Setup for Emacs
• xbar/BitBar
• Conky and other monitors
• Discussion
• Alternatives
  • emacsclient --eval
  • Linux/Gnome
• Tips

I designed a hack to see your clocked-in in task on your bar.

The hack is composed of a few elements, Emacs code that adds hooks for clock-in and clock-out, a Python script to process a file with the Emacs output, and a code for Xbar.

The code is not perfect, if you quit your Emacs, without clocking-out the content of the file will not be changed so you will not see any update on the bar (at least not till next clocking-in or -out)

I have been using this for 2 years, and it's pretty robust. I didn't have time to share it before.

Setup the code for Emacs, add this line to your ~/.emacs.el, in my case:

(load-file "/Users/magnus/workspace/OrgModeClockingXBar/OrgModeClockingXBar.el")

Install https://xbarapp.com .

Put into OrgModeClockingXBar.1s.sh ~/Library/Application Support/xbar/plugins, you can also Open Plugin folder:

cat ~/.OrgModeClockingXBar.txt
# or via python script to do more processing 
# python /Users/magnus/workspace/OrgModeClockingXBar/OrgModeClockingXBar.py
# ^ change the path for `OrgModeClockingXBar.py` in `OrgModeClockingXBar.1s.sh`

Can also be easily used with Conky, or anyother system monitor if you can cat ~/.OrgModeClockingXBar.txt.

• https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/comments/ytdsho/orgmodeclockingxbar_see_a_task_when_you_clock_in/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/comments/yteilw/github_mmagnusorgmodeclockingxbar/
• https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2022-11/msg00415.html

from gxonatano_ @reddit

Cool. I do something similar for my Sway / Waybar config here in my dotfiles. You can use it in polybar, too, or i3bar, or whatever. It's just a script that polls emacs every so often and gets the clock. If you can see a way to improve it, let me know!

$ emacsclient --eval '(if (org-clocking-p)(org-clock-get-clock-string) -1)'
#(" [0:01] (OrgModeClockingXBar)" 0 29
  (face org-mode-line-clock))

https://github.com/JonathanReeve/dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/org-clock.hs

(not tested by @mmagnus)

Thanks for reddit to like to this https://github.com/freddez/gnome-shell-simple-message with the code for Emacs as well (see below). See also https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5018/simple-message/

(defun current-task-to-status ()
  (interactive)
  (if (fboundp 'org-clocking-p)
      (if (org-clocking-p)
          (call-process "dconf" nil nil nil "write"
                        "/org/gnome/shell/extensions/simple-message/message"
                        (concat "'" (org-clock-get-clock-string) "'"))
        (call-process "dconf" nil nil nil "write"
                      "/org/gnome/shell/extensions/simple-message/message"
                      "'No active clock'"))))
(run-with-timer 0 60 'current-task-to-status)
(add-hook 'org-clock-in-hook 'current-task-to-status)
(add-hook 'org-clock-out-hook 'current-task-to-status)
(add-hook 'org-clock-cancel-hook 'current-task-to-status)
(add-hook 'org-clock-goto-hook 'current-task-to-status)

https://github.com/cantsin/dotfiles/tree/2dc36a98d62cb253f3eed7359d472cf72d314b3a/home/org-task

There is a Python script that can be added to XBar to process ~/.OrgModeClockingXBar.txt to do even more.

Test if the Python setup can read the file and show a clocked-in task:

➜  OrgModeClockingXBar git:(main) ✗ /Users/magnus/workspace/OrgModeClockingXBar/OrgModeClockingXBar.py
[0:12] (orgmode: time bar)