How do you change the color for all the items in the status bar in the i3 WM?

Question

In the i3 window manager you have this status bar. The configuration to enable the bar and tell it which file to load for it is in the ~/.i3/config file. This points to /etc/i3status.conf which contains the following to match the font color I use in my terminal emulator:

general {
   colors = true
   color_good = "#00A5FF" #some neon blue
   color_degraded = "#006298"
   color_bad = "#FF0000"
   output_format = i3bar
   interval = 5
}

If I enable a status element which doesn't work in my case - for instance ipv6 - it accordingly displays in red. But why are the rest of the statuses all appearing in white and not in blue like I specified? Isn't color_good the default color?

Solution

The extent to which each element in the statuses responds to color_good/degraded/bad in the i3status.conf file is not entirely clear but this is not how you set a default color for all the items. To supply a uniform¹ default color for all the elements in the status, you just need add a color block to the bar section of your .i3/config file instead (defaults used here except for the statusline item):

bar {
 colors {
        background #000000
        statusline #00A5FF #that neon blue
        separator #666666

        focused_workspace  #4c7899 #285577 #ffffff
        active_workspace   #333333 #5f676a #ffffff
        inactive_workspace #333333 #222222 #888888
        urgent_workspace   #2f343a #900000 #ffffff
    }
        status_command i3status -c /etc/i3status.conf
}

Then use mod1+Shift+r to restart which reloads the configuration.

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^{1. Note that even as you do so an item like ethernet will show the color_good color from the i3status.conffile instead. (?)}