The Absolute LogViewer

Everything you wish tail -f had — on Windows. Real-time tailing, independent tabs, split-pane compare, regex highlight rules and context preview.

⬇ Install (ClickOnce) · Standalone .exe · Portable .exe · Website

Free · .NET 10 / WPF · 16 languages · SHA-256 verified downloads

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What it does

• Real-time tailing — follow log files live; new lines stream in instantly. Scroll up to pause, hit the bottom to resume.
• Not just .log — give it file patterns and it follows any text log, Linux and Unix included: syslog, messages, a rotated auth.log.1, files with no extension at all. Binary files are skipped automatically.
• Independent tabs — each tab is its own workspace, with its own logs, split, search and ordering. Watch separate projects at once.
• Split-pane compare — two files side by side, each with its own search and tail.
• Tail .csv in columns — .csv/.tsv render as a table; the header becomes the column titles and new rows appear live.
• Regex highlight rules — colour whole lines or single words, with word-boundary helpers and a live preview.
• Context preview — hover a filtered line to peek at the surrounding lines from the full, unfiltered file.
• Built-in auto-update — Standalone and Portable update themselves, integrity-checked over HTTPS.
• 16 languages, switched instantly, no restart.

Editions

Edition	Install	Size	Requirements
ClickOnce	from the website	~5 MB	Microsoft Edge · auto-updates via Windows
Standalone	LogViewer.exe	~2.5 MB	.NET 10 Desktop Runtime
Portable	LogViewerPortable.exe	~158 MB	none — self-contained

Blocked from downloading .exe files? Each edition also ships as a .zip in the same release.

First run

The Standalone and Portable downloads are digitally signed — Windows shows the publisher's name. The signature is recent, so Windows or your browser may still ask you to confirm on first launch: click More info → Run anyway. The ClickOnce install keeps its own signature and may still show “Unknown publisher”. Every release publishes its SHA-256, and the app verifies it before installing any update over HTTPS — tampered binaries are rejected automatically.

Independently verified: tested in Softpedia Labs and awarded 100% Clean — no spyware, adware or viruses.

About this repository

This is the public distribution repository: it hosts the landing page (GitHub Pages), the ClickOnce manifests and the release artifacts. The source code is not public.

Bug reports and feature requests are very welcome via Issues. Pull requests aren't accepted, since the source lives elsewhere.

Freeware — free for personal and commercial use.

About

Made by mBrothers — three brothers who keep talking each other into building things. Questions and ideas: [email protected]

Also from us: ExplorerFocus — a distraction-free file explorer for Windows.

© 2026 mBrothers