Cava sound visualiser on waybar

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Cava Waybar

Cava can be integrated into Waybar as a module to display real-time audio visualizations, commonly known as music visualizers. This integration is achieved by configuring Waybar to execute the Cava command and process its output, which is typically displayed using specific Unicode characters

To set up the Cava module in Waybar, the configuration is defined within the Waybar configuration file (often config.jsonc or config.json). A typical configuration block for the Cava module includes specifying the command to run, such as cava -p /path/to/cava.conf, and defining the format for the output The cava.conf file, which is referenced in the Waybar configuration, contains settings like the audio source, number of bars, and visual style

Key configuration options for the Cava module in Waybar include:

• framerate: Sets the frames per second for the visualization, replacing the interval setting
• bars: Defines the number of bars in the visualization
• method: Specifies the audio capturing method, such as pulse, pipewire, alsa, fifo, sndio, or shmem
• sensitivity and autosens: Control the sensitivity of the visualization, with autosens automatically adjusting sensitivity if bars peak
• hide_on_silence: Hides the widget if no audio input is detected after a specified sleep_timer period
• noise_reduction: A value between 0 and 1 to smooth the visualization, with 1 being very smooth and 0 being fast but noisy
• format-icons: Defines the array of Unicode characters used to represent the bars, such as ["▁", "▂", "▃", "▄", "▅", "▆", "▇", "█"]

For the visual output to render correctly, the system must have a font that supports the specific Unicode characters used by Cava (e.g., U+2581 to U+2588, which are the block characters ▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█) Some users have reported success by installing a specific font like "bargraph" from Fontstruct to ensure proper rendering The Waybar CSS must then be configured to use this font and style the Cava module appropriately