Type to search.

Get a compact list of running tasks

  • GET /_cat/tasks
Auth The Elastic Stack includes Elastic's core products such as Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash, and Beats. Availability Experimental since 5.0 This functionality is experimental and is not ready for production usage. Experimental features may change or be removed at any time. Elastic will work to fix any issues, but experimental features are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features. Specific Support terms apply. Unless stated otherwise on the page, this functionality is available when your Elastic Stack is deployed on Elastic Cloud Hosted, Elastic Cloud Enterprise, Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes, and self-managed environments. This documentation corresponds to the latest patch available for each minor version. If you're not using the latest patch, check the release notes for changes.

Get information about tasks currently running in the cluster. IMPORTANT: cat APIs are only intended for human consumption using the command line or Kibana console. They are not intended for use by applications. For application consumption, use the task management API.

Required privileges

Cluster privileges monitor

Query parameters

actions string[]

The task action names, which are used to limit the response.

detailed boolean · default: false

If true, the response includes detailed information about shard recoveries.

nodes string[]

Unique node identifiers, which are used to limit the response.

parent_task_id string

The parent task identifier, which is used to limit the response.

h union oneOf

A comma-separated list of columns names to display. It supports simple wildcards.

Supported values include:

  • id: The ID of the task with the node.
  • action (or ac): The task action.
  • task_id (or ti): The unique task ID.
  • parent_task_id (or pti): The parent task ID.
  • type (or ty): The task type.
  • start_time (or start): The start time in milliseconds.
  • timestamp (or ts, hms, hhmmss): The start time in HH:MM:SS.
  • running_time_ns (or time): The running time in nanoseconds.
  • running_time (or time): The running time.
  • node_id (or ni): The unique node ID.
  • ip (or i): The IP address.
  • port (or po): The bound transport port.
  • node (or n): The node name.
  • version (or v): The Elasticsearch version.
  • x_opaque_id (or x): The X-Opaque-ID header.
Values: id action ac task_id ti parent_task_id pti type ty start_time start timestamp
s union string | string[]

List of columns that determine how the table should be sorted. Sorting defaults to ascending and can be changed by setting :asc or :desc as a suffix to the column name.

timeout union oneOf · default: 30s

Period to wait for a response. If no response is received before the timeout expires, the request fails and returns an error.

Values: -1 0
wait_for_completion boolean · default: false

If true, the request blocks until the task has completed.

format string · default: text

Specifies the format to return the columnar data in, can be set to text, json, cbor, yaml, or smile.

help boolean · default: false

When set to true will output available columns. This option can't be combined with any other query string option.

v boolean · default: false

When set to true will enable verbose output.

bytes enum

Sets the units for columns that contain a byte-size value. Note that byte-size value units work in terms of powers of 1024. For instance 1kb means 1024 bytes, not 1000 bytes. If omitted, byte-size values are rendered with a suffix such as kb, mb, or gb, chosen such that the numeric value of the column is as small as possible whilst still being at least 1.0. If given, byte-size values are rendered as an integer with no suffix, representing the value of the column in the chosen unit. Values that are not an exact multiple of the chosen unit are rounded down.

Values: b kb mb gb tb pb
time enum

Sets the units for columns that contain a time duration. If omitted, time duration values are rendered with a suffix such as ms, s, m or h, chosen such that the numeric value of the column is as small as possible whilst still being at least 1.0. If given, time duration values are rendered as an integer with no suffix. Values that are not an exact multiple of the chosen unit are rounded down.

Values: nanos micros ms s m h d

Response

application/json
<array> object[]
id string

The identifier of the task with the node.

action string

The task action.

task_id string

The unique task identifier.

parent_task_id string

The parent task identifier.

type string

The task type.

start_time string

The start time in milliseconds.

timestamp string

The start time in HH:MM:SS format.

running_time_ns string

The running time in nanoseconds.

running_time string

The running time.

node_id string

The unique node identifier.

ip string

The IP address for the node.

port string

The bound transport port for the node.

node string

The node name.

version string

The Elasticsearch version.

x_opaque_id string

The X-Opaque-ID header.

description string

The task action description.