Change Workspace Icons and Labels
NOTICE: This page was copied from the Regolith 1.x website and has not been updated for Regolith 2. It may contain out of date information.

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. For example, the 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 from the 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.

Changing Icons #

Follow these steps to override the default workspace label with your own:

  1. Find the character you want to use and copy to the clipboard. This example will use the Sigma glyph from Material Design Icons font ().
  2. Add a line to your Xresources overrides file with the workspace number and character you wish to use:
Regolith version 3.0 onward replaces “i3-wm” with “wm” in Xresource keys. The content on this page has been updated for Regolith 3.0+. If you are using an earlier version, use “i3-wm” instead of “wm” in the key names below. For example wm.foo.bar changes to i3-wm.foo.bar for Regolith 1.x and 2.x.
$ echo "wm.workspace.06.name: 6:" >> ~/.config/regolith3/Xresources
  1. Refresh your UI:
$ regolith-look refresh

In i3, workspace labels are only updated when a workspace is created. Ensure you’re creating an new workspace 6 if following the example above:

Changing Labels #

The same approach can be used to specify textual descriptions of your workspaces. For example, adding the following lines to your ~/.config/regolith3/Xresources file will change the first three workspaces:

wm.workspace.01.name: 1: Terminal
wm.workspace.02.name: 2: Web
wm.workspace.03.name: 3: Chat

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

Further Reading #

See the reference page for configurations for more details about config files in Regolith.

Calendar March 5, 2024