macOS Unified Logs

macOS Unified Logs

The macOS Logs plugin by Netdata makes viewing, exploring and analyzing macOS unified logs simple and efficient.

It queries Apple’s native OSLog framework directly and does not invoke log show, log stream, or other external log-query commands during normal query execution.

The plugin exposes the local macOS unified log store as a structured, searchable Logs tab source.

Visualization

You can start exploring macOS unified logs on the “Logs” tab of the Netdata UI.

Key features

• Supports the native macOS unified log store.
• Uses Apple’s public OSLog framework.
• Allows filtering on macOS log fields for any selected time frame.
• Allows full-text search across collected log fields.
• Provides a histogram for log entries over time, with a breakdown per field-value.
• Supports severity coloring based on the OSLog level.
• Supports PLAY mode through repeated bounded native queries, without running log stream.

Setup

Prerequisites

• macOS with the OSLog framework available
• Access to the local unified log store; Apple’s OSLog API requires elevated privileges for local system logs, so Netdata installs macos-logs.plugin as a root-owned setuid Function plugin
• A Netdata Cloud account

Configuration

There is no configuration needed for this integration.