In a Unix environment, usually the preferred way to tail logs is to use the tail command. However in Windows, it’s slightly different. Today I just wanted to share two alternatives I’ve found when looking for a way to do this.

Powershell

In case you want to use already existing tools in Windows, PowerShell is a really good option. PowerShell 3 includes a -Tail parameter to include the amount of lines you need.

Get-Content filenamehere -Wait -Tail 30

BareTail

If you’re more of a GUI kind of person, then BareTail might be what you’re looking for. It provides with some basic highlighting capabilities and it’s extremely easy to use.