How to Install watch on macOS Sequoia

The watch command is a useful utility in Unix-like systems that allows you to execute a command periodically and display its output. However, macOS does not come with watch pre-installed. If you’re running macOS Sequoia and want to use watch, follow the steps below to install it.

Recently i switch my mabook to a new MacBook Pro M2 and try to use the command to watch some openshift logs and i got the following result:

To install just use Homebrew.

brew install watch

Using watch on macOS

Now that watch is installed, you can start using it. The basic syntax is:

watch -n <seconds> <command>

For example, to monitor the disk usage of your system every two seconds, you can run:

watch -n 2 df -h

Additional Options

• -d: Highlights the differences between updates.
• -t: Turns off the title/header display.
• -b: Beeps if the command exits with a non-zero status.

Alternative: Using a while Loop

If you prefer not to install watch, you can achieve similar functionality using a while loop in the terminal:

while true; do <command>; sleep <seconds>; done

For example:

while true; do df -h; sleep 2; done

This method works in any macOS version without requiring additional installations.