FG
💻 Software

Is there a way to see any tar progress per file?

Fresh5 days ago
Mar 15, 2026260728 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

I have a couple of big files that I would like to compress. I can do this with for example The problem is that I can't see any progress, so I don't have a clue how long it will take or anything like that. Using I can at least see when each file is completed, but when the files are few and large this isn't the most helpful. Is there a way I can get tar to show more detailed progress? Like a percentage done or a progress bar or estimated time left or something. Either for each single file or all of them or both.

Error Output

tar cvfj big-files.tar.bz2 folder-with-big-files

Unverified for your environment

Select your OS to check compatibility.

1 Fix

Canonical Fix
Unverified Fix
New Fix – Awaiting Verification

Fix for: Is there a way to see any tar progress per file?

Low Risk

I prefer oneliners like this: It will have output like this: For OSX (from Kenji's answer) Explanation: tarball tool create file use stdout instead of a file (to be able to pipe the output to the next command) The input folder to zip use absolute paths (not necessary, see comments) pipe to progress monitor tool use the following size as the total data size to transfer (for % calculation) evaluate the expression disk usage summarize in one line with bytes. Returns eg pipe (|) to which returns on…

Awaiting Verification

Be the first to verify this fix

Sign in to verify this fix

Environment