nice flags & options

Basic usage

Run a command with lower priority (niceness 10 by default).

nice ./heavy_computation.sh

-n, --adjustment

Set a specific niceness adjustment. Range: -20 (highest priority) to 19 (lowest).

nice -n 15 make -j8

nice -n 19 find / -name "*.log"

High priority

Negative values increase priority (requires root).

sudo nice -n -10 ./critical_process

Check current niceness

nice

renice

Change the priority of a running process.

renice 10 -p 1234

sudo renice -5 -p 1234

Renice by user

Change priority for all processes owned by a user.

sudo renice 15 -u username

Combine with other tools

nice -n 19 tar czf backup.tar.gz /home/

nice -n 10 ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 output.mp4