Log Viewer

At the end of computer events, some types of applications create log files to store and display relevant information, which is pretty useful for debugging, or if something goes wrong. These files are best left intact, so it’s a good idea to rely on specialized applications like Log Viewer to analyze log file contents.

On the bright side of things, the application isn’t packed inside a setup package, so you can just as well have it deployed on a thumb drive in case you want or need to use it on other computers. Moreover, the health status of the computer it’s used on is not put at risk, because registry entries are not altered to enable functionality.

The first time you run the application you’re asked whether or not to associate the LOG file format with the program, but this can also be done from the options menu, which also holds the option to remove the association. A large area is used as a view space for LOG file content, and you can toggle the visibility of a file list you can populate with files of great importance.

Just to make it easier, the application can highlight different types of text strings to identify errors and info tags, and you can even customize these tags from the format text panel. Bringing up the options pane lets you enable automatic refresh of documents, word wrap, text color, as well as automatic scrolling to the bottom of the document when updating.

Moreover, the application comes with a search tool in case you need to look up particular strings in the events sheet. Even with all of the above, the application feels a little rough around the edges. For instance, scrolling through a large file is only possible with the caret, because there’s no scroll bar, and the mouse wheel has no effect here.

All things considered, we can state that Log Viewer is the type of application to use when you need to identify text strings of interest inside LOG files, or have a better look at details thanks to syntax highlighting. Although it feels a little rough around the edges, it can easily become your default LOG viewer, offering quite an intuitive design and comfortable set of features.