[FEATURE] New Nowplaying styles

[Affanmm]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Here i redesigned the now playing for the new waybar themes. I also changed the arrangement a bit to make it look better and function, here you can check as well and then I can make a PR.

Describe the solution you'd like

take a look and tell me about it.

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

Support or Contribution

• I am willing to contribute or support this feature

[vjeko2404]

The script "now-playing.sh" could use some update.
In current state by using cache and interval reading it every second gives that sluggish feeling.
I made some modifications to your script and it's like this now:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# --- Configuration ---
MAX_LEN=30          # Maximum visible characters
SCROLL_SPEED=0.2    # Seconds between frames (Lower = Smoother/Faster)
PAUSE_ON_START=10   # Frames to wait at the start of the loop
SEPARATOR="  •  "   # Separator between Title and Artist

# Internal State
scroll_pos=0
last_track=""
wait_counter=0

while true; do
    # Fetch all info in a single call to save CPU
    # Format: Status|Artist|Title
    metadata=$(playerctl metadata --format "{{status}}|{{xesam:artist}}|{{xesam:title}}" 2/dev/null)
    
    if [[ -z "$metadata" ]]; then
        # Output empty text when no player is active
        echo "{\"text\": \"\", \"class\": \"stopped\"}"
        scroll_pos=0
        last_track=""
        sleep 5 # Long sleep when nothing is happening
        continue
    fi

    IFS='|' read -r status artist title <<< "$metadata"
    
    # Clean up and combine
    current_track="${title}${SEPARATOR}${artist}"
    
    # Reset scroll if the track changed
    if [[ "$current_track" != "$last_track" ]]; then
        scroll_pos=0
        wait_counter=$PAUSE_ON_START
        last_track="$current_track"
    fi

    # CSS class state (lowercase for matching)
    class_state="${status,,}"

    # Handle Paused state
    if [[ "$status" == "Paused" ]]; then
        display_text="${current_track:0:$MAX_LEN}"
        echo "{\"text\": \"$display_text\", \"class\": \"$class_state\"}"
        sleep 1
        continue
    fi

    # Only scroll if text is longer than MAX_LEN
    if [ ${#current_track} -le $MAX_LEN ]; then
        echo "{\"text\": \"$current_track\", \"class\": \"$class_state\"}"
        sleep 1
    else
        # Manage the "Wait at start" timer
        if [ $wait_counter -gt 0 ]; then
            display_text="${current_track:0:$MAX_LEN}"
            ((wait_counter--))
        else
            # Create the loop by appending the start to the end
            extended_track="${current_track}${SEPARATOR}${current_track}"
            display_text="${extended_track:$scroll_pos:$MAX_LEN}"
            
            ((scroll_pos++))
            
            # Reset scroll once passed the original length + separator
            if [ $scroll_pos -ge $(( ${#current_track} + ${#SEPARATOR} )) ]; then
                scroll_pos=0
                wait_counter=$PAUSE_ON_START
            fi
        fi

        echo "{\"text\": \"$display_text\", \"class\": \"$class_state\"}"
        sleep "$SCROLL_SPEED"
    fi
done

With this, you don't need the interval and you can control scrolling inside the script itself and modules.json can look like this:

  "custom/nowplaying": {
    "exec": "/home/Vjeko/Scripts/Arch/hyprland/now-playing.sh",
    "format": "  {}", 
    "return-type": "json",
    "escape": true,
    "on-click": "playerctl play-pause",
    "on-click-right": "playerctl next",
    "on-click-middle": "playerctl previous"
  }

Has few benefits:

• Zero Disk I/O: No more .cache files. Everything stays in RAM.
• Metadata: One playerctl call fetches the Title, Artist, and Status simultaneously.
• Variable Frame Rate: It updates faster for smoother scrolling but sleeps longer when paused or when there's no player.
• Smart Truncation: It only scrolls if the text is actually longer than your MAX_LEN.

Feel free to give it a spin or make a pull request. You can gladly put your name to it, I don't really care about that. From the path in my modules.json, you can assume that I use few of my own scripts instead of original ones.
With your current styling propositions, this could look great!

Cheers!