I have been trying so hard to find a way to make conky appear behind all the other windows and folders on my desktop, and as far as I have been able to find no one has found an answer up to this point.
for reference, I have been looking for the solution for most of the day for the last two days!
my operating system is Ubuntu 18.04(bionic beaver), with the gdm3, window manager.
here's the code from my .conkyrc file.
conky.config = {
alignment = 'top_right',
background = false,
border_inner_margin = 0,
border_outer_margin = 0,
border_width = 1,
console_graph_ticks = ',_,-,=',
cpu_avg_samples = 12,
default_bar_height = 4,
default_bar_width = 0,
default_color = 'gold',
default_gauge_height = 25,
default_gauge_width = 40,
default_graph_height = 25,
default_graph_width = 0,
default_outline_color = 'white',
default_shade_color = 'black',
disable_auto_reload = false, --use this to stop updates when saving the config.
diskio_avg_samples = 2,
double_buffer = true,
draw_borders = false,
draw_graph_borders = true,
draw_outline = false,
draw_shades = true,
extra_newline = false,
font = 'DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12',
format_human_readable = true,
gap_x = 5,
gap_y = 60,
hddtemp_host = '127.0.0.1',
hddtemp_port = '7634',
if_up_strictness = 'up',
--imap = 'webmail.hostdw.com username password -i 60 -f INBOX -p 143 -r 5',
--lua_draw_hook_post = 'conky_my_overlay',
--lua_draw_hook_pre = 'conky_my_background',
lua_load = '~/home/lavar/Desktop/lua_scripts/temps.lua',
--lua_shutdown_hook = 'conky_my_cleanup',
--lua_startup_hook = 'conky_my_wakeup',
max_port_monitor_connections = 256,
max_text_width = 0,
max_user_text = 16384,
maximum_width = 1000,
minimum_height = 5,
minimum_width = 5,
--mpd_host = '127.0.0.1',
--mpd_password = 'password',
--mpd_port = 'port',
--mysql_host = 'default is localhost',
--mysql_port = 'default is mysql port',
--mysql_user = 'default is your username',
--mysql_password = 'if this is not set there is no password',
--mysql_db = 'default is mysql'
music_player_interval = 1,
net_avg_samples = 2,
no_buffers = true,
nvidia_display = dp,--so many questions...
--nvidia_gpu = '${color CC9900}GPU:$color $alignr ${execi 60 nvidia-settings -query GPUCoreTemp | perl -ne 'print $1 if /GPUCoreTemp.*?: (\d)./;'}'
--nvmem = '${nvidia memfreq}'
out_to_console = false,
out_to_stderr = false,
own_window = true,
own_window_argb_value = 50,
own_window_argb_visual = true,
own_window_class = 'Conky',
own_window_hints = 'above,undecorated,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
own_window_type = 'desktop',--set to desktop for background, and normal for foreground.
show_graph_range = true,
show_graph_scale = true,
stippled_borders = 0,
temperature_unit = 'fahrenheit',
times_in_seconds = false,
top_cpu_separate = false,
update_interval = 1,
uppercase = false,
use_spacer = 'none',
use_xft = true,
}
conky.text = [[
${scroll 20 $nodename - $sysname $kernel on $machine | }
$hr
${color grey}Uptime:$color $uptime
${color grey}Frequency (in MHz):$color $freq
${color grey}Frequency (in GHz):$color $freq_g
${color grey}RAM Usage:$color $mem/$memmax - $memperc% ${membar 4}
${color grey}Swap Usage:$color $swap/$swapmax - $swapperc% ${swapbar 4}
${color grey}CPU Usage:$color $cpu% ${cpubar}
${color grey}Processes:$color $processes ${color grey}Running:$color $running_processes
$hr
${color grey}File systems:
/ $color${fs_used /}/${fs_size /} ${fs_bar 6 /}
${color grey}Networking:
Up:$color ${upspeed enp1s0} ${color grey} - Down:$color ${downspeed enp1s0}
$hr
${color CC9900}GPU:$color $alignr ${execi 1 echo "`nvidia-settings -t --query [gpu:0]/GPUCoreTemp
` *9/5+32" | bc}°F
${color CC9900}VIDEO ${hr 2}$color
NVidia GeForce GPU ${alignr} ${nvidia gpufreq} Mhz
Memory ${alignr} ${nvidia memfreq} Mhz
Temperature $alignr ${nvidia temp}°C
$hr
${color grey}Name PID CPU% MEM%
${color lightgrey} ${top name 1} ${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1} ${top mem 1}
${color lightgrey} ${top name 2} ${top pid 2} ${top cpu 2} ${top mem 2}
${color lightgrey} ${top name 3} ${top pid 3} ${top cpu 3} ${top mem 3}
${color lightgrey} ${top name 4} ${top pid 4} ${top cpu 4} ${top mem 4}
]]
as you can see I've been experimenting a lot with code from the manual and other feeds from the forums, I have tried changing the "own_window_type" to desktop, override, etc. but haven't found a single solution to my problem.
the main issue is that anything behind the conky window is unclickable, which is hard to understand because the code and forums I have looked at have all said that this is a bug with Ubuntu 18.04 and that the version of conky has a hard time using the override and desktop variables correctly.
please help me find a solution to this and if anything else is wrong with code please inform me of it.XD
thanks in advance!
I have to admit that this whole thing is to answer the question I had yesterday, for all those who might have it in the future!
so the code above is the same as the one I'm using right now.
but just before I got on to write this to the forum, I was messing with the keyboard shortcuts in my settings.
I found this shortcut:
and I was curious about what exactly this would do since I haven't used it before. I used the shortcut, which made all the windows disappear, then used it again, to bring them back. As soon as the windows came back I noticed that the folders that had been behind conky were more visible. I was sure it was a trick of the mind! but sure enough, the folders were now in front of conky!
for whatever reason, this shortcut fixes a problem that the internet hasn't been able to solve.
just to clarify, this is by no means a permanent fix. it has to be done almost every time conky launches. which is great if you leave your computer running for days, and weeks on end. but it does fix a problem that seemed impossible before.
I hope this becomes useful to other people and that it will be easily found by others. thanks for helping me find this answer with the knowledge that it is a problem for many of us users.
have a nice day!
ps - if you are running conky from the terminal it does remove the terminals connection with it.
pps - if you edit the .conkyrc file and don't have "disable_auto_reload" set to true, then conky will reload in front of the folders. but the shortcut can be used to fix this again.
For me the following config solved similar problem.