The hardest thing about using Conky …is choosing which theme to use.
Thousands of different configs, themes and set-ups available for the versatile X11-based system stat tool.
Some of these focus on simple tasks, like simple showing you the time, the weather or system resource usage.
Other, more complex creations are designed around specific tasks, to fit specific screen resolutions or integrate with a specific background wallpaper!
But what’s the best way to run more than one Conky theme at the same time?
Run Different Conky Themes On Same Desktop
The following (great) Conky tip comes courtesy of OMG! Ubuntu! reader ‘Dave’, who left it as a comment on our ‘Word Clock Conky’ post.
Dave’s nifty solution lets you run multiple Conky scripts in the same session on the same desktop — and no, you don’t have to hack them all into one giant, sprawling mess of a .conkyrc file.
Perhaps you want a stylish clock n’ weather forecast at the top of your screen and a data-spewing iStatPro clone for Linux sat well beneath it.
Well, you can. And all it requires is a quick copy and paste.
Dave explained the steps needed in his original comment:
“If you want to use more than one .conkyrc, rename them as .conkyrc1, .conkyrc2, etc. and make a startup script. Then you can point to the startup script in your startup preferences.
Here’s the contents of my startup script, adjust for the path to your conkyrcs:”
#!/bin/sh sleep 5 conky -q -c /home/YOURUSERNAME/.conky/conky1/conkyrc1 & conky -q -c /home/YOURUSERNAME/.conky/conky2/conkyrc2 & exit
Remember to hit ‘Save’ before exiting and remember to rename your conky configs. You will also need to give the newly made script permission to run.
To have all your favourite Conky themes load at login you can add the script you created to Startup Applications Startup Applications > Add > enter path to script.
Thanks for the tip, Dave!