WinTail

I recently had the opportunity to use WinTail, a freeware Tail for Windows tool. It is a simulation of the LINUX / UNIX tail command with added features offered by the Windows GUI concept. WinTail includes SMTP and sound notifications of specific keywords found within the files being monitored through a grep functionality.

This tool is compatible with all 32bit/64bit Windows platforms, both client and server. The main features of WinTail are that it can monitor multiple files simultaneously, has an intuitive graphic user interface, and a Grep-Like feature of one or more terms with keyword highlights. It also has Tabbed UI / Non-tabbed UI available and performs a drag and drop functionality that allows users to tail files quickly and easily. Additionally, WinTail supports Ansi and UTF8 encodings.

WinTail allows for email reports of the matching keywords found within the input file and has sound alerts when the matching keywords are found within the input file. The tool offers real-time file viewing and Follow tail mode, which is similar to tail -f on Unix. It can view files of any size and can export to an external file all application registry settings.

WinTail offers a portable version with no installer, and command-line arguments are accepted. It also includes Check for updates. Overall, I found WinTail to be an extremely useful tool and recommend it to any Windows user who monitors multiple files or requires a grep-like feature.