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NICE

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: February 2026
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NAME

nice - run a program with modified scheduling priority

SYNOPSIS

nice [,OPTION/] [,COMMAND /[,ARG/]...]

DESCRIPTION

Run COMMAND with an adjusted niceness, which affects process scheduling. With no COMMAND, print the current niceness. Niceness values range from -20 (most favorable to the process) to 19 (least favorable to the process).

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#nic-n'-n, --adjustment=,NX'tty: link'/: add integer N to the niceness (default 10)
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/nice#nic-help'--helpX'tty: link': display this help and exit
X'tty: link https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/nice#nic-version'--versionX'tty: link': output version information and exit

Your shell may have its own version of nice, which usually supersedes the version described here. Please refer to your shell's documentation for details about the options it supports.

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

AUTHOR

Written by David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs to: bug-coreutils@gnu.org

Report Gentoo bugs to: https://bugs.gentoo.org/
GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

Exit status:

AUTHOR

REPORTING BUGS

SEE ALSO