zebar

Zebar is a cross-platform desktop customization tool for creating taskbars, desktop widgets and popups. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, with downloads published in the project's latest release; local builds are documented in the contributing guide. Widgets are rendered in native webviews, described as similar to Electron but more lightweight. The application is controlled from a system tray icon that opens a GUI, where users can browse a marketplace of widget packs, install them, and configure packs to run on startup. Widget packs live under the ~/.glzr/zebar directory. Each pack is a directory containing a zpack.json file that defines the pack and its individual widgets; Zebar only scans one level deep, so nested pack directories are not detected. A JSON schema for zpack.json is provided in the repository, and the same options can be configured through the GUI. The GUI can scaffold a new pack with a name and description, and add widgets to a pack from templates. Most templates require Node.js and a package manager (npm or pnpm) and a build step after source changes; a React buildless template avoids that requirement. Widgets consist of an HTML file plus assets such as CSS, JS and images. Marketplace widgets can be copied from the downloads directory into the user's own Zebar directory to customize them without being overwritten. A key feature is the set of reactive "providers" exposed through the zebar NPM package, giving frontends access to system information that changes over time. Documented providers include audio, battery, cpu, date, disk, glazewm, host, ip, keyboard, komorebi, media, memory, network, systray and weather. Each provider has configurable refresh intervals and typed outputs; for example, battery exposes charge percent, health, cycle count, state, charging status, time until empty or full, power consumption and voltage, while audio exposes playback and recording devices, default devices, and a setVolume function. Date supports custom formatting tokens, timezone and locale settings. Several providers integrate with window managers such as GlazeWM and komorebi. The README notes a Windows troubleshooting item: if Zebar fails to start, updating to the latest Microsoft WebView2 runtime via the Evergreen Standalone Installer may be required. The project links to a Discord community and marks good first issues for new contributors.