Pipe Viewer

Current version: 1.9.42 (11 October 2025) [src]

pv - Pipe Viewer - is a terminal-based tool for monitoring the progress of data through a pipeline and modifying its flow. It can be inserted into any normal pipeline between two processes to give a visual indication of how quickly data is passing through, how long it has taken, how near to completion it is, and an estimate of how long it will be until completion. Data flow rate, error handling strategy, buffer size, and cache interaction can all be adjusted.

Additional support is available for multiple instances working in tandem, to given a visual indicator of relative throughput in a complex pipeline:

This software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 or later.

• Source code: pv-1.9.42.tar.gz [signature]
• Manual for pv
• Git repository (at Codeberg)
• Issue tracker (at Codeberg)

Releases are signed with the signing key.

# Download the release's source archive
curl -O https://ivarch.com/s/pv-1.9.42.tar.gz
# Download the release's signature file
curl -O https://ivarch.com/s/pv-1.9.42.tar.gz.txt
# Use GnuPG to verify the signature
gpg --verify pv-1.9.42.tar.gz.txt pv-1.9.42.tar.gz

gpg: Signature made Sat 11 Oct 2025 22:02:58 BST
gpg:                using RSA key D8FF44A79CC8A61EF694FA7EB883E01314DA8E84
gpg:                issuer "andrew.wood@ivarch.com"
gpg: Good signature from "Andrew Wood <andrew.wood@ivarch.com>" [unknown]
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: D8FF 44A7 9CC8 A61E F694  FA7E B883 E013 14DA 8E84

To install pv, follow these steps:

curl -O https://ivarch.com/s/pv-1.9.42.tar.gz
tar xzf pv-1.9.42.tar.gz
cd pv-1.9.42
sh ./configure
make
sudo make install

If you do not want to build it from source yourself, several operating systems and Linux distributions carry pv. See the "Packages and ports" section below.

Comments, bug reports, and patches can be sent using the Issue tracker, or through the Contact Form.

Packages and ports

Notes

• (7 Feb 2022) - Jacek Wielemborek writes:

  pgrep -x gzip | xargs -n1 -I{} bash -c 'tmux split-window -l 1 pv -ptebar -d {}:3; tmux last-pane'
  

  You can run this in a tmux session and it's going to display a progress bar for each currently running gzip decompression process. Quite often I run a massively parallel job and it's difficult to estimate ETA when the process is not uniform. This way I'm getting a lot of progress bars and I can get a better feel of the system's performance.

News

1.9.42 - 11 October 2025

• feature: permit multiple arguments to --watchfd (#12)
• feature: new “=NAME” syntax for --watchfd to watch processes by name using pgrep(1) (#95)
• feature: new “@LISTFILE” syntax for --watchfd to watch processes listed in a file
• fix: improve support for changing the format of a --watchfd process with --remote
• fix: don’t read more than --size bytes when using --stop-at-size (#166)
• fix: transfer nothing if --stop-at-size is given a --size of 0 (#166)
• i18n: Finnish translation stub added
• i18n: Turkish translations updated

1.9.34 - 26 July 2025

• fix: prevent tight loop consuming CPU when waiting for a partially filled output pipe to be drained (#164)
• fix: correct a memory handling fault when using --bar-style with --watchfd (#163)
• i18n: French translations updated

1.9.31 - 28 January 2025

• feature: the --format option can now be used with --numeric for customised numeric output, such as JSON (#127)
• i18n: German translations updated
• i18n: Polish translations updated
• i18n: Russian translations updated

1.9.27 - 12 January 2025

• fix: turn off IPC support if sys/shm.h is not available, for compilation on Termux
• fix: bypass valgrind checks on ARM by default due to false positives

1.9.25 - 22 December 2024

• fix: test failure of --watchfd on macOS corrected (#124)

1.9.24 - 19 December 2024

• feature: new --format sequences for graphical progress bars - “%{bar-block}”, “%{bar-granular}”, and “%{bar-shaded}” (#15)
• feature: new --format sequence “%{sgr:colour,…}” to use ECMA-48 Select Graphic Rendition codes to add colours
• feature: new --bar-style option to change the default bar style (#15)
• feature: allow decimal values such as “1.5G” with “--size”, “--rate-limit”, “--buffer-size”, and “error-skip-block” (#35)
• cleanup: improve progress bar granularity on wide displays by internally tracking the transfer percentage as a decimal number
• cleanup: correct detection of --remote usability on GNU Hurd
• cleanup: reduce likelihood of race conditions in tests when running on slow systems
• cleanup: reduce memory footprint
• docs: simplified the synopsis section of the manual

1.9.15 - 8 December 2024

• feature: new --format sequence “%nL”, showing the most recent line written (#121)
• feature: each --format sequence now has a more readable equivalent name, for example “%r” can be written as “%{rate}”
• feature: new --format sequences “%{progress-bar-only}” and “%{progress-amount-only}”
• fix: allow --format to include “%nA” more than once, with different “n” values (#122)
• fix: allow --format to include “%p” more than once, with optional width prefix
• fix: calculate width correctly when wide characters are in --format strings
• fix: add configure script fallback for --remote check when cross-compiling (#120)
• fix: allow extra-display to be changed by --remote (#123)
• cleanup: refactored display formatters into separate functions
• cleanup: improve format parser handling of dangling or invalid “%” sequences

1.9.7 - 2 December 2024

• feature: new --extra-display option to update window and process titles (#3, #4)
• fix: correct failure to report file positions in --watchfd (#118)
• i18n: Russian translations added
• cleanup: tests added for --watchfd (#10)
• cleanup: worked around file descriptor leak false positives in valgrind 3.23 (#97)
• cleanup: cleared all shellcheck warnings in the test scripts
• cleanup: check at compile-time whether --remote is going to be usable (#119)

1.9.0 - 15 October 2024

• feature: new --store-and-forward option to read input to a file first, then write it to the output (#100)
• feature: new --stats option to show transfer stats at the end, like “ping” (#49)
• feature: --rate can now be used with --numeric (#17)
• feature: --gauge with --progress to show rate gauge when size is unknown (#46)
• i18n: comprehensive German translations update
• i18n: comprehensive Polish translations update
• i18n: complete Turkish translations added
• i18n: complete Czech translations added
• i18n: updates to French translations
• fix: resume stopped pipelines when running in the background (part of #56)
• fix: inspect the output pipe buffer to give a more accurate progress indicator of how much the next command has consumed
• fix: prefix completion time (--fineta) with FIN rather than ETA (#43)
• fix: surround average rate (--average-rate) with brackets rather than square brackets
• fix: correct a memory leak in --watchfd PID
• fix: make --direct-io work correctly with --output instead of assuming stdout
• fix: call posix_fadvise() on every input, not just the first one
• fix: write UTC timestamps in debugging mode to avoid lockups in signal handlers
• security: added a signed MANIFEST file to releases
• cleanup: removed TODO.md, since it’s just an outdated copy of the issue tracker
• cleanup: re-ordered structure members to reduce padding
• cleanup: improved readability of SIGTTOU handling code
• cleanup: refactored to separate display, transfer, and calculation more cleanly
• cleanup: instead of moving stderr when backgrounded, set a suspend-output flag

1.8.14 - 7 September 2024

• fix: correct double-free on exit when using “--watchfd” (#96) reported by jettero

1.8.13 - 18 August 2024

• feature: when using “--size @FILE”, FILE can be a block device, and its size will be used (pull request #94) supplied by alexanderperlis

1.8.12 - 18 July 2024

• fix: correct the detection of output block device size that was broken in 1.8.10 (#91)
• fix: do not treat a zero/interrupted write as an end of file (pull requests #92 and #93)

1.8.10 - 15 June 2024

• feature: new “--output” option to write to a file instead of standard output (pull request #90) supplied by xmort

1.8.9 - 21 April 2024

• feature: new “--si” option to display and interpret size suffixes in multiples of 1000 rather than 1024 (pull request #85) supplied by kevinruddy
• fix: continue producing progress output when the output is blocking writes (#34, #86, #87)
• fix: honour the TMPDIR / TMP environment variables again, rather than hard-coding “/tmp”, when using a terminal lock file (originally removed in 1.8.0) (#88)
• i18n: corrections and missing strings added to French translations (pull request #83) supplied by Thomas Bertels

1.8.5 - 19 November 2023

• fix: corrected percentage formatting so it doesn’t jump from 2 to 3 characters wide at 100% (#80)
• fix: replaced “--remote” mechanism, using a temporary file instead of SysV IPC, so it can work reliably even when there are multiple PV instances
• fix: corrected compilation failure when without IPC support
• security: addressed all issues highlighted by the software auditing tools “splint” and “flawfinder” (see “make analyse”) (#77)
• cleanup: compilation warnings fixed on non-IPC and MacOS systems

1.8.0 - 24 September 2023

Features

• feature: new “--discard” option to discard input as if writing to /dev/null (#42)
• feature: new “--error-skip-block” option to make “--skip-errors” skip whole blocks (#37)
• feature: use posix_fadvise() like cat(1) does, to improve efficiency (#39)
• feature: new “--enable-static” option to “configure” for static builds (#75)

Security

• security: with “--pidfile”, write to a temporary file and rename it into place, to improve security
• security: keep self-contained copies of name and format string in PV internal state for memory safety
• security: ignore TMP / TMPDIR environment variables when using a terminal lock file

Fixes

• fix: only report errors about missing files when starting to transfer from them, not while calculating size, and behave more like cat(1) by skipping them and moving on
• fix: auto-calculate total line count with “--line-mode” when all inputs are regular files
• fix: use clock_gettime() in ETA calculation to cope with machine suspend/resume (#13)
• fix: if “--width” or “--height” were provided, do not change them when the window size changes (#36)
• fix: when a file descriptor position in “--watchfd” moves backwards, show the rate using the correct prefix (#41)
• fix: rewrite terminal state save/restore so state is not intermittently garbled on exit when using “--cursor” (#20), (#24)

Cleanups

• cleanup: addressed many potential issues highlighted by the software auditing tools “splint” and “flawfinder” (see new target “make analyse”)
• cleanup: switched the build system to GNU Automake
• cleanup: replaced the test harness with the one native to GNU Automake
• cleanup: added a test for terminal width detection to “make check”
• cleanup: added a test to “make check” to ensure that “make install” installs everything expected
• cleanup: replaced AC_HEADER_TIOCGWINSZ with AC_CHECK_HEADERS(sys/ioctl.h) for better MacOS compatibility (#74)
• cleanup: with “--sync”, call fsync() instead of fdatasync() on incapable systems (#73)
• cleanup: the manual is now a static file instead of needing to be built with “configure”

Dropped items

• dropped: dropped support for “--enable-static-nls”
• dropped: removed the Linux Software Map file, as the LSM project appears to be long dead
• dropped: will no longer publish to SourceForge as it has a chequered history and is unnecessary
• dropped: removed project from GitHub and moved to Codeberg - see “Give Up GitHub”

Other items

• licensing change from Artistic 2.0 to GPLv3+

[Show full history]