GeoIP Monitor

A lightweight status bar widget for Noctalia that displays your external IP address and geographical location (City, State/Region). It utilizes an efficient two-tier polling system to monitor for network changes without spamming rate-limited APIs.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	pk/geoip-monitor
Entries	Bar widget: status

Requirements

Install curl on PATH.

Usage

To add to your bar, navigate to: Noctalia Settings > Bar: / Widget List > Add/modify "GeoIP Monitor".

Left-clicking the widget on your status bar will immediately clear the local cache and force a manual network refresh.

noctalia msg panel-toggle pk/ip-monitor

noctalia msg plugins enable pk/ip-monitor

noctalia msg plugins disable pk/ip-monitor

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
show_ip	boolean	true	Toggles the display of the external IP address.
show_city	boolean	true	Toggles the display of the city name.
show_state	boolean	true	Toggles the display of the state or region name.
show_icon	boolean	true	Toggles the visibility of the globe icon in the status bar.
separator	string	" | "	Separation between text and IP.
interval	int	5	The frequency (in seconds) to poll for IP changes. Min: 1, Max: 3600.

Notes

• Network Access: This plugin spawns background curl processes to make outbound HTTPS requests to api.ipify.org and ipwho.is.

• Rate Limiting Safeguards: The plugin heavily caches results. It polls api.ipify.org at your defined interval as a lightweight tripwire, and only queries the heavier ipwho.is geolocation database when a new IP is actually detected.

How it works:

1. Queryies https://api.ipify.org for your external IP at the configured interval.

• This site has no limit on queries per day, but only provides IP.

2. If the IP changes, https://ipwho.is is queried for geographic and IP data. This site limits queries to 1000 per 24hr without api key. This data is:

• Stored in the cache for continual display until the IP changes.
• Refreshed from cache until a new IP is detected via api.ipify.org.