---
id: ovos-utils
version: "0.8.5"
license: Apache-2.0
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# ovos-utils — collection of simple utilities for use across the openvoiceos ecosystem

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 92.4K/mo

## What it is and what it does

ovos-utils is a utility library for the OpenVoiceOS ecosystem, providing both programmatic utilities and command-line tools for log management. The package includes the ovos-logs command-line tool, which allows developers and operators to slice logs by time range, filter by severity level (error, warning, debug, exception), reduce log file sizes, and view logs selectively across multiple log files. It wraps common log-analysis tasks into simple commands with options for specifying time windows, log types, and output destinations.

The package is actively maintained and depends on established libraries like requests, watchdog, and rich (for terminal output formatting). It requires Python 3.9 or later and installs as a pure-Python wheel with low friction. The library is positioned as a shared utility layer for the broader OpenVoiceOS project, making it most relevant for developers working within that ecosystem or building tools that integrate with OpenVoiceOS components.

Use it for:

- Quickly extract and examine logs from a specific time window during debugging or incident response.
- Filter logs by severity level to identify errors, warnings, or exceptions without manual log scanning.
- Reduce the size of accumulated log files to manage disk usage while preserving recent entries.
- Integrate log-management utilities into OpenVoiceOS-based projects or voice assistant deployments.
- Analyze logs from specific services (bus, skills, etc.) to isolate issues in multi-component systems.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Provides utilities and command-line tools for the OpenVoiceOS ecosystem, including log slicing, filtering, and reduction capabilities.

Yes, if you are working within the OpenVoiceOS ecosystem or building tools that integrate with it. The package provides practical log-management utilities with low install friction and active maintenance. If you are not using OpenVoiceOS, the utilities are unlikely to be relevant; evaluate based on whether your project needs these specific log-analysis capabilities.

## Install

pip install ovos-utils
uv add ovos-utils
poetry add ovos-utils

## Installing ovos-utils

Before you install: Low install friction with a pure-Python wheel distribution. Actively maintained with a recent release (2026-03-11) and current commit activity (2026-08-14). Depends on 10 runtime packages including pexpect, requests, watchdog, and rich for CLI output.

License in practice: Licensed under Apache-2.0 (permissive), allowing use in commercial and private projects with minimal restrictions beyond attribution and liability disclaimers.

Quickstart:

pip install ovos_utils

from ovos_utils import ...

# Or use command-line tools:
ovos-logs slice
ovos-logs list -e
ovos-logs reduce -s 1000000

Requires Python >=3.9

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package is actively used within the OpenVoiceOS project or if it serves primarily as a utility library for downstream consumers
- What specific utilities beyond the log-management CLI tools are exported from the package for programmatic use

## Package facts

- License: Apache-2.0 (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 92.4K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

openvoiceos utilities, log slicing and filtering, mycroft ecosystem tools, log analysis command line, ovos utilities library, log management tools, voice assistant utilities, log-management, openvoiceos, cli-tools

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/ovos-utils) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/ovos-utils/)