Dynamic Solid Bar Background

[Mirage-Panda]

I’m making a custom status bar and I'm trying to make its background colour to adapt dynamically to my current wallpaper, like the native mac menubar does. In theory, I could make this happen by giving the sketchybar background colour a big blur radius, but it stops at around 50px so the bar isn't a single solid colour.
Right now, I’m extracting the average colour of the top strip of the wallpaper using ImageMagick and applying it as a solid fill.
This works, but it is complex and verbose, and isn't able to update as the wallpaper changes.

Below is my lua file that I am using to do this:

-- Set darkening factor (0 = black, 1 = unchanged)
local DARKEN_FACTOR = 1

-- Get current wallpaper path
function get_wallpaper_path()
	local handle =
		io.popen("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to get POSIX path of (get desktop picture as alias)'")
	local result = handle:read("*a")
	handle:close()
	return result:match("^%s*(.-)%s*$") -- trim whitespace
end

-- Get average wallpaper colour
local function get_average_wallpaper_color(path)
	-- Crop the top 40 pixels then resize to 1x1
	local cmd = "magick '" .. path .. "' -gravity North -crop x40+0+0 +repage -resize 1x1! txt:-"
	local handle = io.popen(cmd)
	local result = handle:read("*a")
	handle:close()

	-- Extract hex colour (RRGGBB)
	local hex = result:match("#(%x%x%x%x%x%x)")
	if not hex then
		-- Fallback to default opaque colour
		return 0xff551e1e2e
	end

	-- Convert hex to numeric channels
	local r = tonumber(hex:sub(1, 2), 16)
	local g = tonumber(hex:sub(3, 4), 16)
	local b = tonumber(hex:sub(5, 6), 16)

	-- Assemble ARGB (alpha = 0xff)
	return (0xff << 24) | (r << 16) | (g << 8) | b
end

-- Darken colour based on factor
local function darken_color(argb, factor)
	-- Extract channels
	local a = (argb >> 24) & 0xff
	local r = (argb >> 16) & 0xff
	local g = (argb >> 8) & 0xff
	local b = argb & 0xff

	-- Apply factor
	r = math.floor(r * factor)
	g = math.floor(g * factor)
	b = math.floor(b * factor)

	-- Assemble colour
	return (a << 24) | (r << 16) | (g << 8) | b
end

-- Create a function
local function get_avg_bg()
	local path = get_wallpaper_path()
	local colour = path and get_average_wallpaper_color(path) or 0xff551e1e2e
	return darken_color(colour, DARKEN_FACTOR)
end

return {
	get_avg_bg = get_avg_bg,
}