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To show the last 20 lines of a log in PowerShell, run Get-Content -Path .app.log -Tail 20. To show those lines and keep watching for additions, add -Wait: Get-Content -Path .app.log -Tail 20 -Wait.
Show the last lines once
Use -Tail followed by the number of lines you want. Replace . app.log with the path to your text log and adjust the count as needed:
Get-Content -Path .app.log -Tail 20The command prints up to the requested number of trailing lines, then finishes. To show only the final line, use -Tail 1. Microsoft’s Get-Content reference demonstrates piping a file item to Get-Content -Tail 1 and notes that this is faster than reading every line into a variable and selecting the last one.
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Follow a log as new lines are added
Add -Wait to print the selected tail and continue waiting for new lines:
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Get-Content -Path .app.log -Tail 20 -WaitMicrosoft documents that -Wait keeps the file open and checks for new content once per second, so output is not necessarily instantaneous. Stop the command with Ctrl+C. The parameter is provided by the FileSystem provider, so it applies to file-system drives and cannot be combined with -Raw. Microsoft also documents that deleting the file produces a non-terminating error that interrupts the wait.
Choose between a snapshot and ongoing monitoring
| Need | Command | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Inspect the current end once | Get-Content -Path .app.log -Tail 20 |
Prints the selected trailing lines and completes. |
| See the current end and follow additions | Get-Content -Path .app.log -Tail 20 -Wait |
Prints the selected tail, then checks once per second for new lines until interrupted. |
Use the alias or a literal path
-Last is an alias for -Tail
You can write -Last instead of -Tail:
Get-Content -Path .app.log -Last 20Both specify the number of lines to retrieve from the end. In examples and scripts, -Tail makes the operation especially clear.
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Use -LiteralPath when path characters could be treated as wildcards
For a path containing characters such as square brackets, use -LiteralPath to prevent wildcard interpretation:
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Get-Content -LiteralPath 'C:Logs[archive]app.log' -Tail 20Check that the quoted path exists in your environment. Microsoft lists both -Path and -LiteralPath in the Get-Content reference.
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Counts, versions, and practical limits
-Tailtakes an integer line count. A count of0returns no lines; a negative count causes an error.- Microsoft’s PowerShell 7.5 Get-Content reference says
-Tailwas introduced in PowerShell 3.0. - The appropriate
-Encodingvalue depends on how the application wrote the log; there is no single encoding to assume for every file. - These commands read text content. They do not, by themselves, query or interpret structured log fields.
- The documentation does not establish that a running
-Waitcommand automatically switches to a replacement file after log rotation. Do not rely on it to follow a renamed or newly created log without checking your logging setup.
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