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I'm confused... When I start Console (on Catalina), there is a sidebar with a section labeled "Reports" which contains several groups of log files. It changes depending on what exists, but I currently have "Crash Reports", "Diagnostic Reports", "system.log", "Spin Reports", and a few more.

One of them is "Log Reports", which lists every log file in /private/var/log/.

Console.app also makes plenty of use of structured data: right-click on a log entry (in the live-scrolling main view), and it offers you a dozen different facets to filter the view: hide/show by Thread/Application/Subsystem/User/Category/etc,

I've actually thought about using Console for development. It's far better at least compared to my current go-to "tail -f"




Console certainly looks pretty but you’ll find very quickly that if you actually want to use it it’s really not that great. First off, streaming logs takes so much CPU that in Big Sur when you open the app it just shows a pane warning you of the performance implications of actually “turning on” logging (which itself is kind of stupid, because one of the useful features of unified logs is that they store log messages from the past efficiently). And then filtering is kinda janky, and actually viewing the content of a message is a pain, and good parts of it often get censored, and…

(By the way, I have yet to see anyone use the other logs in the sidecar because it’s easier to just open that folder in Finder.)


Big Sur is in Beta. The process you described is quite fast on Catalina.


Developers need the developer beta to work on their apps right now. He’s not using the beta for fun. Apple, realizing this, could have improved the performance of this developer tool.


While I like to crap on Apple for all the things they do wrong on their overpriced walled gardens, I can still excuse a performance regression in a beta that is trying to add proper support for a new architecture.


I don’t think it’s significantly worse, it just seems that the warning is now there to indicate something that was always like that.


> He’s not using the beta for fun.

[citation needed]


Ha! Not purely for fun, anyway.


It’s pretty bad on Catalina too. Steaming logs in Console takes a substantial fraction of a core, so it’s not something I want to leave running in the background.


Not for me it isn't. I try to watch logs from an iOS app I'm working on (by connecting my iPhone) and it hammers the CPU. My laptop becomes unusable.


Curious if using `log stream` with predicates is better, from a performance perspective at least?


I’ve found that to be much, much better.


Cool. Thanks. Was wondering if it was something intrinsic to the logging system. I find Console a little easier to explore in, but the log command much better for most things beyond that.

I suppose it might be ripe for wrapping with a TUI that can help with predicates and options...


Maybe even a GUI using Cocoa…you could even call it something cool, like “Console”!




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