tl;dr - The flag for pv in this case is --line-mode (-l). So, if you have a command that produces lots of lines of output (e.g., for demo purposes, "yes" - whi

tl;dr - The flag for pv in this case is --line-mode (-l). So, if you have a command that produces lots of lines of output (e.g., for demo purposes, "yes" - which literally floods the terminal with lines): yes | pv -l >/dev/null Example progress output, showing lines processed (total & rate): 405M 0:00:03 [ 140M/s] [ <=> ]