Two common problems with log: all the censored contents, which can make them meaningless, and the sheer number of entries. How to use logging preferences to tackle them.
LogUI
For the first 17 years, Macs got by perfectly well without a command line. Apple’s server admin apps featured extensive GUIs, and saved admins from using Terminal. But now even Apple tells folk to practise for ClickFix.
How long should you expect your Mac’s log to retain entries? Evidence here suggests that anything beyond 5 days isn’t looking good, and expecting to retrieve those made more than 5 days ago is likely to fail.
New version adds more detail to the list of log files, and a new graphical view to pick out anomalies in up to 6 weeks of previous log records.
How to browse log entries for an event that occurred many days after its entries have been removed from the active log, by discovering its exact time and the processes involved.
A new app to analyse the size of log entries written by different processes over the last few weeks or months, Logistician. First release version for Sonoma and later.
The older AppKit API supports seconds in its Date Picker, but they’ve been dropped from its SwiftUI successor. There are many other signs our Macs are moving to less precise time. Is this intentional, to reverse our slavery to time?
When something has gone wrong, if you don’t know what to look for in the log, nor when it happened, the log is hostile. It also leaves important entries without the user being aware of them. Here are ideas of how those could be improved.
Catch up on your reading with selected articles from the past year, covering security, logs, macOS generally, Spotlight in particular, and some utilities.
Several utilities access the log. When there are problems getting entries, they each report details. Here’s what each error report means, and what you can do to fix it.
The Eclectic Light Company 