Always on top?

[stdedos]

• Is it possible for conky to be always on top?
• Fully click-through, unless ... idk you press one small (rendered) button

[Caellian]

Depends on your WM.

As per wm-spec, you can use above in own_window_hints (instead of below) to get the window to display on top of other windows. Note that this requires own_window_type = 'normal'. For other options and context, see Window Configuration page on wiki.

[stdedos]

My end result I'd like to be https://github.com/jxai/lean-conky-config, but I am "upset enough" that it cannot be "just a separate config file", and it has to be a convoluted thing (if I want my own_window_* stuff, why do I need to inherit ALL the repo things? It's a different thing that "you can very easily demo/see this locally by running this file)

[Caellian]

You need to use undecorated,skip_taskbar,skip_pager hints as well to make conky integrate well with Unity DE (it uses GNOME btw).

According to the repo, git clone https://github.com/jxai/lean-conky-config ~/.config/conky should set up that config correctly so you don't have to copy it line-by-line. Have you tried doing that?
Make sure to backup what you've done already with mv ~/.config/conky ~/.config/conky-backup before cloning because ~/.config/conky can't contain anything for the git command to work.

You can also try something like conky config manager if you don't feel like manually configuring conky.

[stdedos]

It's even more interesting 🤪

[Caellian]

Change your

minimum_height = 5,
minimum_width = 5,

to something larger, 100px at least.

[stdedos]

That's not it 😕

Even when the window was decorated, the issue is not minimum_height; the window can be expanded.
Then, it shows clearly that the issue is "there's nothing inside to render".