pstree
Display running processes as a tree
TLDR
Display a tree of all processes
$ pstree
Display a tree with PIDs$ pstree -p
Display processes owned by a specific user$ pstree username
Display command line arguments$ pstree -a
Display children of a specific process$ pstree 1234
Display parents of a specific process$ pstree -s 1234
Highlight current process and ancestors$ pstree -h
SYNOPSIS
pstree [-a] [-c] [-h] [-p] [-s] [-u] [pid|user]
DESCRIPTION
pstree shows running processes as a tree. The tree is rooted at either pid or init if pid is omitted. It visually compacts identical branches using square brackets and counts, and displays child threads under parent processes in curly braces.
PARAMETERS
-a, --arguments
Display command line arguments-c, --compact-not
Disable compaction of identical subtrees-C, --color
Color process names by attribute (e.g., age)-g, --show-pgids
Show process group IDs-h, --highlight-all
Highlight current process and its ancestors-H pid, --highlight-pid
Highlight specified process and its ancestors-l, --long
Display full-length lines without truncation-n, --numeric-sort
Sort processes by PID instead of name-N, --ns-sort
Show individual trees per namespace type-p, --show-pids
Display process IDs-s, --show-parents
Show parent processes of the specified process-t, --thread-names
Show full thread names-T, --hide-threads
Hide threads; show only processes-u, --uid-changes
Show uid transitions-Z, --security-context
Display SELinux security context-A
Use ASCII line-drawing characters-G
Use VT100 line-drawing characters-U
Use UTF-8 line-drawing characters
CAVEATS
Some values shown (like command arguments) are read from /proc and may be modified by processes. Child threads are shown in curly braces {} and repeated identical branches are shown in square brackets [] with a count.
HISTORY
pstree is part of the psmisc package. It provides a hierarchical view of processes that complements the flat list provided by ps.