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Getting Started

LogRaker's main window is a two-pane layout: a sidebar of configured Sources on the left, the live tail output on the right. To get something flowing, you need one Source and one Stream.

Adding your first Source

A Source is "where the logs live." Select 'New Source…' from the + menu in the toolbar and pick the kind that matches where your logs are:

Each opens a sheet tailored to its inputs. Filling in name + the kind- specific fields (file path for local, host/user/key for SSH, project ID + auth for GCP) is enough - save and the Source appears in the sidebar. Select it to see its details on the right, with its type in a tag next to its name.

What LogRaker can tail

Across those Sources, LogRaker reads:

Adding your first Stream

A Stream is one specific file - or a systemd journal, or one GCP Logging filter - on a Source. One Source can have many Streams. From the sidebar + menu, choose New Stream…, pick the Source, type the absolute path to the file you want to tail (or pick it with the Browse button on local Sources). Save.

The new Stream appears nested under its Source in the sidebar. Click it to start tailing - the right pane shows the live output.

Status indicators

Each Stream row in the sidebar has a colored status LED:

A small waveform glyph next to the LED sweeps like a heartbeat monitor while new output arrives - the trace draws in from the left and dies away behind the beam - and runs out during quiet periods, so you can see at a glance which Streams are actually active. It rolls up like the LED: a collapsed Source or group beats while anything inside it is receiving.

In the Web Edition, LogRaker's Dock icon carries the same signal: a small LED in its corner shows the overall status of all your Streams - the worst state wins, so a single failing Stream turns it red. When nothing is streaming, the LED disappears.

Auto-start

By default, Streams start tailing only when you select them in the sidebar. Turn on Auto-stream at startup in the Stream editor if you want a Stream to begin tailing the moment LogRaker launches - useful for Streams you always want running in the background.

Arranging the sidebar

The sidebar has three sections - Sources, Layouts, and Monitors. Drag a section's header up or down to reorder them (put Monitors on top, say); a dashed outline shows the section you're moving and an insertion line shows where it'll land. To collapse a section, move the pointer over its header and click the chevron that appears at the right edge; click it again to expand. A collapsed section keeps its chevron showing, so you can always tell what's hidden. The order, and whether each section is collapsed, are remembered and sync across your Macs via iCloud. (Your individual groups and folders keep their own open/closed state on each Mac.)

Option-click any chevron to open or close that row and everything inside it. To do the same for a whole section, choose 'Expand All' or 'Collapse All' from its right-click menu; the View menu's 'Expand All' (⌥⌘→) and 'Collapse All' (⌥⌘←) act on every section at once.

Right-click a section - its header, a row in it, or the empty space below - for that section's New… actions, the same ones the toolbar's + menu offers. Groups drag up and down to reorder them within their section.

Favorites

Above the sidebar are two tabs, 'All' and 'Favorites'. 'All' is the full tree; 'Favorites' is a short, flat list of the Streams, Layouts and Monitors you marked, with no groups or folders in the way - useful once your Sources have grown enough that the thing you want is several levels down.

Right-click a Stream, Layout or Monitor and choose 'Add to Favorites'; the same menu offers 'Remove from Favorites' once it is one. A section header appears in the 'Favorites' tab only when something in it is a favorite. Your favorites sync across your Macs via iCloud, and the tab you were last on is remembered.

'Favorites' is a way to reach things, not to rearrange them, so its right-click menus keep only what acts on the row itself - open, edit, start and stop, and a Monitor's 'Reset Count'. Moving something into a group, duplicating it, creating something new and deleting all stay on the 'All' tab, where you can see where things sit. Pressing ⌫ or ⌘⌫ here takes the row off the list rather than deleting it, the same as 'Remove from Favorites'. On 'All', where the key would destroy the thing itself, it stays ⌘⌫ alone.

You can still create from the toolbar's + menu while looking at 'Favorites'. Since a new Stream, Layout or Monitor is not a favorite yet, LogRaker switches to 'All' and selects it, so you can see what you made. The same happens whenever something lands you on a row this tab does not show - double-clicking a match to jump to its Stream, say.

Showing one type of Source

Once you have Sources of more than one type, a pop-up above the 'All' and 'Favorites' tabs narrows the sidebar to one of them - only SSH Servers, say. It lists just the types you have. Choosing one leaves its Sources and their Streams, plus the Layouts and Monitors that include at least one of those Streams, on both tabs. Choose 'All Sources' to see everything again.

While a type is chosen, rows can't be dragged to rearrange them. If you create or open something of another type, LogRaker switches back to 'All Sources' and selects it.

Moving around

Back (⌘[) and Forward (⌘]) retrace your trail through the sidebar, like a browser - also on the toolbar chevrons and in the View menu. Every jump counts, including the ones a dashboard card or a match makes for you; a new jump clears the Forward trail, and anything deleted along the way is skipped. The pane you land on takes the keyboard: the line you left is selected, and the arrow keys move it straight away.

Coming back puts you where you were: a Dashboard keeps its card selection, a Monitor's match list keeps the line you had picked, and a Stream returns to the line you had selected.

Editions, briefly

If you got LogRaker from the Mac App Store, you're running the App Store Edition (sandboxed). If you downloaded it from lograker.app, you're running the Web Edition (not sandboxed). The Welcome window and About panel both show which one you have. The two differ only in file-access rules - see Local System Sources for what that means in practice.