NICE(1)

📦
version 9.10 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 NAME 💖

nice — run a program with modified scheduling priority ✨ (yes bestie, we're out here deciding who the CPU likes more)

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

nice [OPTION] [COMMAND [ARG]...]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Okay so the whole vibe here: you run COMMAND with an adjusted niceness, which literally changes how the scheduler treats your process. That's it. That's the job. 🫶

And if you run it with no COMMAND at all? It just prints the current niceness. Reading, not writing. Chill.

Niceness values go from -20 (most favorable to the process — the CPU is obsessed with you, you're the main character 👑) all the way to 19 (least favorable to the process — the CPU is giving you scraps, lowkey tragic 💀).

Heads up bestie: mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too. No cap. If it says the arg is required, it's required for both forms. Periodt.
  • -n, --adjustment=N — add integer N to the niceness (default 10). So yeah, default behaviour is a lil +10 push toward "please wait your turn" 🙈
  • --help — display this help and exit. Your classic ✨help me✨ moment.
  • --version — output version information and exit. For when you need to know exactly which build you're dealing with.
🚨 Real talk: your shell may have its own version of nice, which usually supersedes the version described here. So if things are acting different, go read your shell's documentation for details about the options it supports. Not our problem, not our manpage, iykyk.

🎀 Exit status: 🎀

  • 125 — if the nice command itself fails 😭
  • 126 — if COMMAND is found but cannot be invoked 🙈
  • 127 — if COMMAND cannot be found 💀
  • - — the exit status of COMMAND otherwise (so whatever your command did, that's what you get back, fr fr)

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by David MacKenzie. Iconic behaviour, honestly. 💜

🌈 REPORTING BUGS 🌈

Found a bug? Don't suffer in silence, tell the people:

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/nice> — or available locally via: info '(coreutils) nice invocation'

Packaged by Ubuntu (9.10-1ubuntu2). Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. 🫶

And that's the whole page, bestie — this was GNU coreutils 9.10, dated August 2026, filed under NICE(1) in User Commands. Now go forth and be the most favorable process in the scheduler. Slay 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from