Force conky to use full screen width

Hello, dear anonymous lurkers.

Todays tip is about how to force conky (we're talking about single line conky setups) to use all available screen width without a gap at the end (without any gaps, actually). Also i'll show you how to make your conky not overlapable by other windows and how to make it available to click through its window.

Ok, first things first.

Open your conkyrc and make the following changes:
own_window yes
own_window_type panel

This makes your conky act like a panel: maximized windows won't overlap it, it won't be shown in pager or taskbar, you can click through it.
A quick-tip: if you supply own_window_hints above - that'll be a direct shot in the leg: conky window will be able to gain focus and you won't be able to click through it. I suggest you follow the official documentation and not set own_window_hints if you don't know what you are doing.
According to the official documentation, in this mode conky retains all available screen width at the edge specified by the alignment setting. However, there is a gap at the end. And it is there no matter what you do. You set minimum_width but it is still there. You pray - nothing. You cry.

That stupid gap is there because conky is drawn at position -5,-5. I don't know why, honestly. But if you connect one more display to your pc to the left of the primary - you will see that.

The most basic solution is to start conky with -x 5 option:
conky -x 5
or just set gap_x in your conkyrc to 5:
gap_x 5

Actually, i can't really say if '5' will suit your needs. Use xwininfo to get the proper value.

Advanced KDE users could benefit the whole kwin 'special window parameters' power to make conky act whatever they want it to.


Cheers,
Serge.