Argos Is Like BitBar For Gnome Shell: It Shows Scripts Output On The Panel (Top Bar)

Searching for a way to show a script output on the Gnome Shell panel (top bar), I came across Argos. This Gnome Shell extension does only one thing: it adds a new item with a dropdown menu to the panel, showing the output from a script and exposing functionality.

The extension is inspired by BitBar, a popular program to put the output from any script on the macOS menu bar, and it's even compatible with most BitBar scripts.

Using it, you can essentially write your own custom Gnome Shell extension using a language you're already familiar with, like Bash, Python, and many others. Since an Argos plugin is just an executable script that writes to stdout, any language can be used to create plugins for it.

Don't know Bash, Python, etc.? No problem, you'll find already existing Argos / BitBar plugins compatible with Argos for a wide range of tasks.

Argos features:

• 100% API compatible with BitBar 1.9.2. All plugins that don't contain macOS-specific code will work with Argos
• Asynchronous execution engine: Argos prevents blocking by scheduling scripts intelligently
• Unicode support
• Optimized for minimum resource consumption; the developer claims that even with multiple scripts refreshing every second, Argos uses less than 1% of the CPU

Besides installing Argos and some basic usage, this article also includes some extra Argos plugins/scripts, and a few places to find plugins for Argos. Continue reading!