LOW risk. Read-only; bg/fg commands control jobs.

jobs

Q: What does jobs do?

List background and stopped jobs in the current shell. jobs lists processes running in the background (&) or stopped (Ctrl+Z) in the current shell session. Combined with fg, bg, disown, and kill %N, it provides job control without needing PIDs.

List background and stopped jobs in the current shell.

low risk

interactive breakdown — edit the command and press Explain

What it does

jobs lists processes running in the background (&) or stopped (Ctrl+Z) in the current shell session. Combined with fg, bg, disown, and kill %N, it provides job control without needing PIDs.

Common flags

Flag	Meaning
`-l` `--list-pids`	Show PID alongside job info
`-p` `--pids`	Show only PIDs

Examples

jobs -lList all jobs with PIDs · explain & risk-check →

fg %1Bring job 1 to foreground · explain & risk-check →

bg %2Resume job 2 in background · explain & risk-check →

disown %1Detach job 1 from shell (survives logout) · explain & risk-check →

kill %2Kill job 2 by job number · explain & risk-check →

Pro tip

Use `disown -h %1` after backgrounding a job with & to prevent it from receiving SIGHUP when your session closes — a lighter alternative to nohup for already-running processes.

nohup ps kill

Open the full explainer →More in Shell & Scripting

Reference text is hand-written and may be incomplete — check man jobs for your version. Test destructive commands on a non-production system first.