Text / log editor with auto-refresh support

Question

I'm looking for a text editor / log manager of some kind that will automatically refresh a file's contents when it changes.

I have a single target log file (e.g. current.log) that is overwritten under certain circumstances and I'd like to be able to leave it displayed and not constantly have to re-open the file to get updates. Much the same as 'tail --follow=name' does in Linux.

I'm using a Windows desktop but it's a remote file so a Linux app would work just as easily.

Solution 1

You can get tail for Windows, a GUI version of tail which implements the tail -f functionality you're used to.

If you're looking for an actual text editor however, check out Notepad++. It can automatically and silently update a file when it detects changes. Simply enable silent updates in Settings -> Preferences -> MISC:

Solution 2

Baretail is a bit rough, and it hasn't been updated for four years, but it's lightweight-enough that I leave it open on a bunch of Tomcat log files whether I'm using them or not...

Solution 3

Snaketail has great potential for a solution.

Solution 4

Necro-answering a post I "answered" 6(!) years ago:

These days I use "glogg":

glogg is a multi-platform GUI application to browse and search through long or complex log files. It is designed with programmers and system administrators in mind. glogg can be seen as a graphical, interactive combination of grep and less.

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