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Migrating from wob

awob ships a wob-format FIFO compatibility shim (awob-listener-wob) so you can swap the daemon without changing any of your existing scripts.

TL;DR​

  1. Install awob and the wob shim:

    cargo install --path crates/awob-daemon
    cargo install --path crates/awob-cli
    cargo install --path crates/awob-listener-wob

  2. Pick the wob theme — a pixel-faithful clone of wob's default look (black background, white border, 400×50, 1000ms timeout).

  3. Configure ~/.config/awob/awob.toml:

    theme = "wob"

    [[listeners]]
    name = "wob-fifo"
    command = "awob-listener-wob"
    args = ["--fifo", "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/wob.sock"]

  4. Stop wob, start awob:

    pkill wob
    awob-daemon       # or `systemctl --user start awob.service`

  5. Your existing scripts keep working. They write <value> or <value> <style> to the same FIFO; the shim parses the line and forwards it as a structured Send to the daemon.

What carries over​

  • FIFO format: <value> and <value> <style> lines work as-is.
  • Style names: wob's low, normal, critical, muted are all defined in awob's wob theme.
  • Geometry: 400×50 surface, anchored centre, 1000ms timeout. Match wob's config.c defaults.

What changes​

  • No more daemon restart on theme change. awob has IPC, so awob theme set <name> swaps themes without losing the FIFO connection.
  • Hot-reload of the theme file. Edit ~/.config/awob/themes/wob/scene.kdl and the next OSD picks up the new layout / colours immediately.
  • Daemon supervises the shim. If the FIFO listener crashes, the awob supervisor respawns it with capped exponential backoff.
  • Multiple sources without daemon-per-event. If you also want battery / brightness OSDs, just install the relevant listeners alongside — auto-discovery handles them. Your wob FIFO stays unchanged.

What's not carried over​

  • -W <width> / -H <height> / --background-color etc. CLI flags. awob's geometry and colour live in the theme, not on the command line. Edit themes/wob/scene.kdl for these.
  • Per-instance daemon. wob's pattern was "one daemon per user-source"; awob is one daemon per session, with multiple listeners sharing it.

Graduating beyond pixel-faithful​

When you're ready to step beyond the wob look, switch to one of the richer stock themes:

awob theme set default --persist
# or
awob theme set tinct --persist        # if you've installed tinct
awob theme set console --persist      # ANSI-green cell-block bar

Your wob FIFO scripts keep working — the wob listener just emits event="wob" sends, which the new theme renders with whatever layout it defines.

Side-by-side test​

If you'd rather not commit until you've seen awob render your content, run them on different FIFOs for a bit:

# Keep wob on its FIFO.
wob -i ~/.config/wob/config &

# Run awob on a different FIFO and a separate keybind.
awob-daemon &
awob-listener-wob --fifo /tmp/awob-trial &

# Some volume-up keybind that fans out to both:
echo "$NEW_VOL" > ~/.config/wob/wob.sock
echo "$NEW_VOL" > /tmp/awob-trial

Once you're happy, point your scripts at one FIFO and shut the other daemon down.