From doc: https://awesomewm.org/apidoc/widgets/wibox.widget.imagebox.html#image > string : Interpreted as a path to an image file. Doesn't specify the supported image file formats. Something that was present in the 4.3 documentation. From old doc: https://awesomewm.org/doc/api/classes/wibox.widget.imagebox.html#wibox.widget.imagebox.image > image: Either a string or a cairo image surface. A string is interpreted as the path to a png image file. Possible fix (of the doc): If png keep being the only supported image file add it on the current doc. If not, list the new supported formats.