JournalView

A fast TUI for journalctl — pick a unit, scroll the logs.

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Why JournalView?

journalctl is powerful but pages of text are awkward to navigate, and remembering -u <unit> for every service gets old fast. JournalView is a lightweight terminal UI written in Rust on top of Ratatui: it lists your systemd service units in a side panel, lets you pick one with the keyboard, and shows that unit's journal in a scrollable pane next to it. If no unit is selected it falls back to journalctl --since=yesterday. No daemon, no config — just a binary that shells out to journalctl and systemctl.

Features

• Three-pane layout — left: systemd service units; top right: search box; bottom right: log view; bottom: help line.
• Unit-scoped log view — pick a .service unit with Enter and the log pane refreshes with journalctl -u <unit>.
• Pure keyboard navigation — Tab cycles panes, arrow keys scroll vertically and horizontally inside each pane.
• No config to write — works out of the box on any host where journalctl and systemctl are on $PATH.
• Search box — TODO/WIP: typing in the search pane is captured but does not yet filter the log view. Tracked in ROADMAP.md.

Comparison

Cells marked TODO need confirmation against current upstream behavior — see issue tracker.

Capability	JournalView	journalctl	lnav	lazyjournal
Interactive TUI	Yes	No (pager only)	Yes	Yes
Reads systemd journal	Yes (shells out)	Yes (native)	TODO	TODO
Built-in unit picker	Yes	No	TODO	TODO
Live tail / follow	No	Yes (-f)	TODO	TODO
Regex search inside the TUI	No (WIP)	Yes (-g)	TODO	TODO
Reads arbitrary log files	No	No	TODO	TODO
Single static binary	Yes (Rust)	n/a (ships with systemd)	TODO	TODO

Installation

Prebuilt binary (Linux)

bashCopy
curl -sL https://github.com/codervijo/journalview/raw/main/install.sh | bash

This installs to ~/.local/bin/journalview. Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your $PATH.

From crates.io

bashCopy
cargo install journalview

From source

Ensure Rust is installed (see rustup.rs), then:

bashCopy
cargo install --git https://github.com/codervijo/journalview.git journalview

Other package managers

• Homebrew — TODO
• Arch (AUR) — TODO
• Standalone release binaries — see the releases page (added by the release workflow on tag push).

Requirements

JournalView shells out to journalctl and systemctl, so it expects a Linux host with systemd. It does not need root, but it can only show journal entries the current user is allowed to read.

Usage

Launch:

bashCopy
journalview

The UI opens with the Logs pane focused, showing journalctl --since=yesterday. Tab cycles between Logs → Selector → Search → Logs. In the Selector pane, move the cursor with Up/Down and press Enter to filter the log pane by that service unit.

Hotkeys

Key	Pane	Action
Tab	any	Cycle to the next pane
q / Q	any	Quit
Up / Down	Logs, Selector	Scroll vertically
Left / Right	Logs, Selector	Scroll horizontally
Enter	Selector	Filter the log pane by the highlighted service unit
Up / Down	Selector	Also clears the active unit filter
any character	Search	Append to search buffer (filtering not yet wired up — see ROADMAP)
Backspace	Search	Delete last character from the buffer
Enter / Esc	Search	Leave the Search pane

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for dev setup, the test loop, and the PR process, and have a look at issues tagged good first issue for a starting point.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the following projects for inspiration:

• Ratatui
• Lazyjournal

Inspired by the functionality of journalctl and enhanced by the capabilities of Rust for high-performance, terminal-based tools.