Configuration and customization¶
Note
Forking the main GitHub repo is not needed to personalize Powerline configuration! Please read through the Quick setup guide for a quick introduction to user configuration.
Powerline is configured with one main configuration file, and with separate configuration files for themes and colorschemes. All configuration files are written in JSON, with the exception of segment definitions, which are written in Python.
Powerline provides default configurations in the following locations:
- Main configuration
powerline/config.json
- Colorschemes
powerline/colorschemes/name.json
,powerline/colorscheme/extension/__main__.json
,powerline/colorschemes/extension/name.json
- Themes
powerline/themes/top_theme.json
,powerline/themes/extension/__main__.json
,powerline/themes/extension/default.json
The default configuration files are stored in the main package. User
configuration files are stored in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/powerline
for
Linux users, and in ~/.config/powerline
for OS X users. This usually
corresponds to ~/.config/powerline
on both platforms.
If per-instance configuration is needed please refer to Local configuration overrides.
Note
Existing multiple configuration files that have the same name, but are placed in different directories, will be merged. Merging happens in the following order:
powerline_root/powerline/config_files
is checked for configuration first. Configuration from this source has least priority.$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/powerline
directories are the next ones to check. Checking happens in the reversed order: directories mentioned last are checked before directories mentioned first. Each new found file is merged with the result of previous merge.$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/powerline
directory is the last to check. Configuration from there has top priority.
When merging configuration only dictionaries are merged and they are merged recursively: keys from next file overrule those from the previous unless corresponding values are both dictionaries in which case these dictionaries are merged and key is assigned the result of the merge.
Note
Some configuration files (i.e. themes and colorschemes) have two level of merging: first happens merging described above, second theme- or colorscheme-specific merging happens.
Quick setup guide¶
This guide will help you with the initial configuration of Powerline.
Look at configuration in powerline_root/powerline/config_files
. If you
want to modify some file you can create ~/.config/powerline
directory
and put modifications there: all configuration files are merged with each other.
Each extension (vim, tmux, etc.) has its own theme, and they are located in
config directory/themes/extension/default.json
. Best way to modify
it is to copy this theme as a whole, remove segment_data
key with
corresponding value if present (unless you need to modify it, in which case only
modifications must be left) and do necessary modifications in the list of
segments (lists are not subject to merging: this is why you need a copy).
If you want to move, remove or customize any of the provided segments in the copy, you can do that by updating the segment dictionary in the theme you want to customize. A segment dictionary looks like this:
{
"name": "segment_name"
...
}
You can move the segment dictionaries around to change the segment positions, or remove the entire dictionary to remove the segment from the prompt or statusline.
Note
It’s essential that the contents of all your configuration files
is valid JSON! It’s strongly recommended that you run your configuration
files through jsonlint
after changing them.
Note
If your modifications appear not to work, run powerline-lint script. This script should show you the location of the error.
Some segments need a user configuration to work properly. Here’s a couple of segments that you may want to customize right away:
- E-mail alert segment
You have to set your username and password (and possibly server/port) for the e-mail alert segment. If you’re using GMail it’s recommended that you generate an application-specific password for this purpose.
Open a theme file, scroll down to the
email_imap_alert
segment and set yourusername
andpassword
. The server defaults to GMail’s IMAP server, but you can set the server/port by adding aserver
and aport
argument.- Weather segment
The weather segment will try to find your location using a GeoIP lookup, so unless you’re on a VPN you probably won’t have to change the location query.
If you want to change the location query or the temperature unit you’ll have to update the segment arguments. Open a theme file, scroll down to the weather segment and update it to include unit/location query arguments:
{ "name": "weather", "priority": 50, "args": { "unit": "F", "location_query": "oslo, norway" } },