# tail

6 Hacker News commenters recommended tail and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Standard Unix utility that shows the end of a file or stream, mainly used to follow logs as they grow and for quick ad-hoc checks.

## Why people recommend it

- Follows logs as they grow (2 comments): "I usually use tail when I need to do some ad-hoc log following." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46468642)) "I'd rather just use journal or tail -f." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507024))
- Useful for troubleshooting running processes (2 comments): "tail suites my needs in the rare cases something unexpected seems to be happening" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232504)) "I actually used this the other day for a long running process on OpenBSD" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46231740))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [fzf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fzf.md): 78 recommend
- [jq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jq.md): 75 recommend
- [grep](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grep.md): 65 recommend
- [Atuin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atuin.md): 63 recommend
- [GitHub CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-cli.md): 49 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "tail", https://hackerapproved.com/p/tail/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).