Have you ever needed to poke around an SCCM log on macOS and realised your only option is tail -f in Terminal? Same here. CMTrace has spoiled me for life: coloured lines, auto-scroll, quick search—everything you need when ConfigMgr starts throwing a fit. On my Mac, though, the closest equivalent was…well, nothing. Plenty of clever console tools, but nothing with a tidy GUI that behaved like CMTrace.
So I decided to scratch the itch myself and put together Panda Log—a small, no-frills log viewer that feels familiar if you’ve spent years double-clicking .log files on Windows. It isn’t fancy, it isn’t polished, but it nails the basics: open a file, watch it update, highlight the ugly bits, move on with your day. It was a weekend project that turned into something I actually use, so I’m sharing it in case it helps you too.
Why “Panda Log”?
- Pandas are the unofficial mascot of debugging: mostly sedentary, eat non-stop, prone to random tumbles. Same.
- I wanted an app icon I could sketch in ten minutes with fewer than six shapes (mission accomplished).
- The domain cmtracemac.app made me yawn; panda-log made me grin.
Features (and Honest Caveats)
| ⭐ Works | 🚧 Rough Edges |
|---|---|
| Colour-coded lines—errors red, warnings orange, info blue. | No dark mode yet; I like living on the edge. |
| Follow Tail toggle, just like CMTrace’s AutoScroll. | CPU usage may spike if you tail a 2 GB log while binge-watching The Witcher. |
| Tabs—open as many logs as your RAM (or patience) allows. | No fancy “Open Recent” menu—use ⌘O like it’s 1999. |
| Sweet little badge showing live error/warning counts. | If you rename the file mid-tail, Panda Log weeps silently. |
| A minimalist search box that actually respects your keyboard shortcuts. | Search has zero regex wizardry—plain text only (for now). |
Is it primitive? Absolutely. Does it get the job done? Also absolutely. It’s basically CMTrace’s scrappy Mac cousin: no frills, slightly awkward, but turns up when you need it and doesn’t judge your log hygiene.
The Stack (for the Curious)
- SwiftUI—because I’m determined to ride this declarative UI train until the wheels fall off.
- DispatchSourceFileSystemObject—the behind-the-scenes tail-f wizard in a tweed jacket.
- Zero third-party dependencies—my tribute to ’90s shareware: download, run, no pod-install ceremony required.
Lessons Learned (and Surprising Side-Quests)
- macOS menus are delightfully finicky: adding “File > Open…” felt like teaching a goldfish to juggle—possible, but splashy.
- I had to stop myself from rebuilding Xcode’s entire split-pane-search chaos. Remember: scope creep is real.
- Naming is hard. “SCCM-Log-Viewer-For-Mac-But-Not-Awful” was a strong contender, yet branding vetoed it.
About My “Expertise” (or Lack Thereof)
Let’s be clear: I’m no macOS GUI ninja. This was equal parts learning exercise and stubborn refusal to stare at tail -fall day. At the moment Panda Log is source-only—no shiny .app download yet. Packaging is next on my hit list; I just need to convince Xcode’s codesigning gods to grant me a blessing. Stay tuned.
Why Release It?
Because someone out there is SSH’d into a Mac mini, tailing smsts.log in vi, muttering expletives at every carriage return—and that someone deserves better. If Panda Log saves you a headache, my work here is done.
Grab the source, raise an issue, or fork it into oblivion over on GitHub. It’s MIT-licensed, so feel free to paint it purple, add regex, or shoehorn AI-powered summarisation if that’s your jam.
Final Thought
Software doesn’t always need to change the world. Sometimes it just has to colour a line red when everything explodes. Panda Log does exactly that—and, like the panda it’s named after, it looks kinda cute while doing it.
Happy tailing,
George
P.S. Spot a bug—of the software variety, not the bamboo-chewing one? Pull requests are warmly welcomed. Spot an actual panda? Call a zookeeper.