Skip to content

The best eww alternatives

3 tools that do a similar job to eww, 3 of them open source. Each entry says what it does and who it suits, so you can pick the one that fits instead of the most famous.

You're replacing

eww

A Rust tool for building your own custom desktop widgets on Linux window managers.

  1. 1

    Polybar

    Open source · MIT · ★ 15.4k

    A customizable status bar for Linux desktops, mainly used with X11 window managers.

    Best for: Linux users who run a tiling window manager such as i3 or bspwm; People who want a custom desktop bar without writing much shell code

  2. 2

    Waybar

    Open source · MIT · ★ 12.1k

    A customizable status bar for Wayland desktops like Sway and Hyprland.

    Best for: Sway or Hyprland users who want a configurable status bar; People comfortable editing JSON and CSS-style config files

  3. 3

    giscus

    Open source · MIT · ★ 12.2k

    A free comment system for websites that stores comments in GitHub Discussions.

    Best for: Developers who run a blog or docs site and want comments without a database; Projects whose audience already uses GitHub

How we pick: tools in the same category that solve the same problem, projects that name each other as alternatives, and open-source projects that describe themselves as an alternative to eww. We don't take payment for placement.