Installation

Generic requirements

  • Python 2.6 or later, 3.2 or later, PyPy 2.0 or later. It is the only non-optional requirement.
  • C compiler. Required to build powerline client on linux. If it is not present then powerline will fall back to shell script or python client.
  • socat program. Required for shell variant of client which runs a bit faster than python version of the client, but still slower than C version.
  • psutil python package. Required for some segments like cpu_percent. Some segments have linux-only fallbacks for psutil functionality.
  • mercurial python package (note: not standalone executable). Required to work with mercurial repositories.
  • pygit2 python package or git executable. Required to work with git repositories.
  • bzr python package (note: not standalone executable). Required to work with bazaar repositories.
  • pyuv python package. Required for libuv-based watcher to work.
  • i3-py, available on github. Required for i3wm bindings and segments.

Note

Until mercurial and bazaar support Python-3 or PyPy powerline will not support repository information when running in these interpreters.

Pip installation

This project is currently unavailable from PyPI due to a naming conflict with an unrelated project, thus you will have to use the following command to install powerline with pip:

pip install --user git+git://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline

. You may also choose to clone powerline repository somewhere and use

pip install -e --user {path_to_powerline}

, but note that in this case pip will not install powerline executable and you will have to do something like

ln -s {path_to_powerline}/scripts/powerline ~/.local/bin

(~/.local/bin should be replaced with some path present in $PATH).

Note

If your ISP blocks git protocol for some reason github also provides ssh (git+ssh://git@github.com/Lokaltog/powerline) and https (git+https://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline) protocols. git protocol should be the fastest, but least secure one though.

To install release version uploaded to PyPI use

pip install powerline-status

Fonts installation

Powerline uses several special glyphs to get the arrow effect and some custom symbols for developers. This requires that you either have a symbol font or a patched font on your system. Your terminal emulator must also support either patched fonts or fontconfig for Powerline to work properly.

You can also enable 24-bit color support if your terminal emulator supports it (see the terminal emulator support matrix).

There are basically two ways to get powerline glyphs displayed: use PowerlineSymbols.otf font as a fallback for one of the existing fonts or install a patched font.

Patched fonts

This method is the fallback method and works for every terminal, with the exception of rxvt-unicode.

Download the font of your choice from powerline-fonts. If you can’t find your preferred font in the powerline-fonts repo, you’ll have to patch your own font instead.

After downloading this font refer to platform-specific instructions.