Change workspace icons

Learn how to set custom icons for each workspace.

Adding icons to workspaces can give your desktop a nice and functional look.

Finding icons

Icons are actually characters from fonts installed by Regolith looks. Each look comes with a specific icon font. The icon font is defined in the typeface_bar variable in the typeface config file. The default look Cahuella uses the Material Design Icons font (see file /etc/regolith/styles/cahuella/typeface).

You can browse the icon font using the Gnome Character Map application (gucharmap package):

  1. Open Gnome Character Map.
  2. Select your icon font in the top left combo.
  3. In the script pane select Common.
  4. Scroll down the characters pane until you find the icons.
  5. Double click on the icon you are looking to use and press the Copy button (bottom right).

Tip: the icons are ordered alphabetically.

Staging files and changing icons

Follow these steps to edit the Xresource definitions of the workspace icons used by i3:

  1. Stage your Regolith Styles Xresources files, as described here.

  2. Stage the /etc/regolith/styles/i3-wm Xresource file in your user directory, and ensure that your user copy of the Xresource file #includes this copy.

  3. Edit your copy of the i3-wm styles file. Find the workspace name definition starting with i3-wm.workspace.01.name: and change the last argument of the WORKSPACE_NAME function from the default glyph to your icon by simply copying and pasting the icon character. The icon character might not be displayed properly if your editor does not support the icon font, but it will work fine in the bar.

  4. Repeat for all required workspaces.

  5. After saving this file log out and back in to see the change.

Adding support for icon fonts in text editors

Atom:

  • Append the name of the icon font to Settings > Editor > Font Familly.
  • Example: Menlo, Consolas, DejaVu Sans Mono, monospace, Material Design Icons