How to Use the viddy Command in Linux as a Modern Alternative to watch

Monitoring the progress of long-running build jobs, tracking filesystem disk changes, and watching Kubernetes pod deployments from the Linux terminal commonly relies on the venerable watch utility. However, traditional watch suffers from noticeable limitations: it struggles with ANSI colour formatting, provides rudimentary diffing that only highlights recent changes, and offers zero ability to scroll backward in time to inspect earlier command outputs. The viddy command provides a modern, feature-packed alternative written in Go that supports full terminal colour, interactive paging, visual diff highlighting, and a built-in time machine mode.

Why Choose viddy Over the Legacy watch Command?

While the standard watch command is ubiquitous across UNIX servers, viddy modernises interactive command monitoring through several key capabilities:

• Full ANSI Colour Support: Faithfully renders coloured outputs from modern CLI tools like kubectl, git status, and eza without stripping color escape sequences.
• Time Machine Mode: Records execution snapshots over time, allowing you to pause monitoring and step backward through previous executions using a history slider.
• Precise Visual Diffs: Highlights exact character additions, modifications, and deletions between consecutive execution intervals.
• Vim-Style Paging: Scroll up, down, left, and right through multi-screen command outputs using standard j, k, h, and l navigation keys.

Installing viddy on Linux Distributions

Installing viddy is fast across multiple distribution package managers and pre-compiled archives.

Installing on Arch Linux

Arch Linux includes viddy in its community repositories:

sudo pacman -S viddy

Installing via Go (Any Distribution)

If you have Go configured on your machine, install directly via go install:

go install github.com/sachaos/viddy@latest

Installing via Homebrew on Linux

If Homebrew is installed on your Linux workstation:

brew install viddy

Installing via Pre-Compiled Binaries

Download the latest release tarball directly from GitHub releases, extract the binary, and copy it to /usr/local/bin/:

curl -OL https://github.com/sachaos/viddy/releases/latest/download/viddy_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz
tar -xzf viddy_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz
sudo mv viddy /usr/local/bin/
rm viddy_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz

Running Commands with viddy

Using viddy follows familiar command-line syntax. Pass your target command as arguments following the binary name:

viddy ls -la

To execute a complex pipeline containing pipes and shell redirections, enclose the command within quotation marks:

viddy "df -h | grep /dev/sd"

Customising the Refresh Interval

By default, viddy updates every 2 seconds. Use the -i (or --interval) flag to specify custom refresh frequencies (such as 1 second or 500 milliseconds):

viddy -i 1s "kubectl get pods"

Harnessing Visual Diff Modes

One of viddy‘s strongest assets is its intelligent diff engine. Enable diff highlighting with the -d flag:

viddy -d "free -m"

Whenever values change between intervals (such as consumed RAM or swap usage), viddy highlights the modified numbers in bold, allowing anomalies to be spotted instantaneously.

Using the Time Machine to Rewind Command History

Unlike watch, which only shows the present moment, viddy keeps an in-memory chronological buffer of past execution results:

1. While viddy is actively running, press the Space key. This pauses continuous execution and enters Time Machine Mode.
2. Use the Shift + Left Arrow and Shift + Right Arrow keys (or click and drag the timeline slider at the top of the screen) to rewind and replay historical snapshots.
3. Observe exactly how output values evolved across past minutes without having to check external log files.
4. Press Space again to exit time machine mode and resume real-time monitoring.

Interactive Paging and Keybindings

While monitoring outputs that exceed terminal window dimensions, use built-in navigation keys:

• j / k: Scroll down and up one line.
• d / u: Scroll half a screen down and up.
• g / G: Jump directly to the top and bottom of the output stream.
• /: Search output text interactively.
• q: Exit viddy cleanly.

Upgrading to viddy brings modern polish, retrospective time-travel debugging, and visual clarity to terminal monitoring workflows across Linux workstations and servers.