powerline-date 202605.0

Powerline date segment with timezone and 30s rotation support

powerline-date

A drop-in replacement for Powerline's built-in date segment that adds timezone support and lets a single segment rotate through several timezones on a fixed interval.

Features

• Render the time or date in any IANA timezone.
• Rotate one segment through a list of zones — each with its own format and colorscheme highlight group — instead of stacking a segment per zone.
• Stateless: the active zone is derived from the wall clock, so nothing is kept between renders and no daemon state is required.

Installation

Install into the same environment as Powerline. If you manage Powerline with pipx:

pipx inject powerline-status powerline-date

Otherwise:

pip install powerline-date

Usage

The package exposes powerline_date.date, usable anywhere a Powerline segment function is accepted (e.g. a tmux theme's segments).

A single timezone

{
    "function": "powerline_date.date",
    "name": "utc_time",
    "args": {
        "format": "%H:%M %Z",
        "timezone": "UTC"
    }
}

Rotating through timezones

One segment can cycle through a list of zones. Each entry may carry its own format and highlight_group (a suffix appended to time:), so each zone can be colored differently in your colorscheme.

{
    "function": "powerline_date.date",
    "name": "rotating_time",
    "args": {
        "cycle_seconds": 30,
        "timezones": [
            {"timezone": "America/New_York", "format": "%I:%M %p 🗽",    "highlight_group": "eastern"},
            {"timezone": "America/Chicago",  "format": "%I:%M %p %Z 🤠", "highlight_group": "central"},
            {"timezone": "UTC",              "format": "%H:%M %Z 👾",    "highlight_group": "UTC"}
        ]
    }
}

The active entry is chosen deterministically from the current time, so no state is kept between renders. For the rotation to look smooth, Powerline must re-render at least as often as cycle_seconds. In tmux:

set -g status-interval 5

Arguments

Argument	Default	Description
format	%Y-%m-%d	strftime format. Used as the fallback when a rotation entry omits its own format.
timezone	None	IANA name (e.g. America/New_York). Local time is used when unset.
timezones	None	List of rotation entries, each with timezone and optional format / highlight_group. Takes precedence over timezone.
cycle_seconds	5	Seconds each entry is shown before rotating to the next.

Colorscheme

Each rendered entry uses the highlight groups ["time:<highlight_group>", "time"], falling back to time when the specific group is undefined, with time:divider for the divider. Define these in your colorscheme to color each zone:

{
    "groups": {
        "time":         {"fg": "white", "bg": "darkblue"},
        "time:divider": {"fg": "black", "bg": "darkblue"},
        "time:eastern": {"fg": "white", "bg": "darkblue"},
        "time:central": {"fg": "white", "bg": "darkgreen"},
        "time:UTC":     {"fg": "white", "bg": "darkestpurple"}
    }
}

When highlight_group is omitted, the timezone name itself is used as the suffix (e.g. time:America/New_York).